Life After Death
by Team Damon
Summary: Sequel to Breath of Life. He's overcome a lot to get to where he's at, but he still has a long way to go. She knows that it's not going to be easy, but she also knows that he's worth it. And neither of them have the slightest clue what in the world they're doing. Bucky/OC
1. Chapter 1

_Eleven years ago_

"I hate him. Everytime he pops up in a scene I just hope Harry or Hermione punches him again."

In a little house mostly forgotten about in the woods outside of Falls Church, Virginia, two young siblings sat together on a couch in the living room, smushed together so that they could read a book at the same time. The younger sister glanced up at her brother in disbelief.

"You hate him?"

"Yeah, he's a Death Eater now. He's gone to the dark side," Paul said, feigning an English accent for the last two words. "So duh."

"He was forced into it!" Summer argued. "He hates what he's doing. He's only doing it because they'll kill him if he doesn't. And he's not doing it very well, either. It's like he's hoping he screws up."

"This is Draco Malfoy!" Paul laughed. "He's the biggest douche in the whole story!"

"Because that's how his father raised him. His father, who is actually evil. I don't think Draco's evil. If he was, Dumbledore would already be dead by now and Draco would be the new hot shot Death Eater, not all pale and sickly and withering away and basically hiding from all of Hogwarts."

Paul snorted dismissively. "You know, Squirt, as a girl, you're supposed to have a crush on, like, Harry or Ron or Cedric -"

"Cedric's been dead for the last two books." She wrinkled her nose and added, "And Ron's a ginger like you. Ew."

"Yeah, but I'm just saying, why do you always pick the weirdest characters to have a crush on?"

"I don't have a crush," she refuted dubiously. "I don't like guys with blonde hair, and Draco's super blonde."

"You like this one."

She rolled her eyes. "Just because I see the horrible situation he's in? He's basically been brainwashed his whole life to be on the wrong side of everything and now he's seeing firsthand what it all really means, and it's horrifying! And now he knows it."

"Maybe, but we'll never find out which of us is right because you keep interrupting and going off on these tangents," Paul said. "At this rate, we'll be lucky to finish this book sometime next year."

"You interrupted first!" she laughed. "I just happened to disagree with you."

"Yeah, well, just so you know, I'm still convinced that Snape is gonna turn out evil."

"And I'm still convinced that you're completely wrong about that," she replied. "Is our bet still on?"

"Heck yeah," Paul grinned. "And since I'm right, it's totally gonna be you doing all the chores for a week."

"Dream on," she smiled. "Now be quiet and let's keep reading."

As they settled back in to restart the somewhat tricky process of two people reading the same book at the same time (because both were too impatient to take turns), their grandmother emerged from the nearby hallway and gave them both a sideways look as she stepped into the kitchen. "Reading more of that garbage witchcraft, I see."

"Always," Paul replied without looking up from the book. Summer snickered next to him.

"Well, one of you kids get your noses out of that book and come chop me an onion." When both grandchildren immediately startled wailing in protest, she rolled her aged brown eyes and pulled out a pair of safety goggles from a drawer and waved it around. "It won't hurt if you wear these!"

"I did it last time," Paul whispered to Summer.

"I did it two times before then," she whispered back.

"Do it or I'll tell her you have a crush on an evil wizard bad guy from our evil book," Paul grinned.

"He's not even evil!" she protested.

"So you do have a crush on him?"

She groaned and slapped her palm over her face. "Paul..."

He laughed and snapped the book shut. "I'll chop the stupid onion. But seriously - I'm starting to get the feeling that one day, when you're all grown up, you're gonna bring home an ax murderer or something and give Grandma a heart attack."

"Oh please," she rolled her eyes. "This town is so boring. I'll probably just end up marrying some boring Army guy like everybody else does."

"Everybody? Summer, you're not even fourteen yet. You don't know everybody in Fall's Church. And I didn't say marry. That's creepy. I'm not letting anyone marry you. Where did you ever get the idea that I would?"

She rolled her eyes and smacked his arm with the book, and then they heard a call from the kitchen. "Onion, before I keel over!"

"Onion, before poor Grandma keels over, Paul," Summer said dramatically, though smiling.

He raised a finger and waved it at her slightly, squinting one of his eyes. "You're a brat, you know that? Talking about getting married and Army guys and Draco Malfoy. I'm gonna go tell."

"What, are you five?" Summer asked, though she looked genuinely nervous now.

Paul grinned. "Ooh, somebody's getting twitchy."

Then he took off, and she tossed the book off of her lap in her rush to chase after him, both of them laughing and yelling names at one another, all while their grandmother rolled her eyes as she heated up a skillet. She'd yell at them for it, but more than anything, she would always be glad that after she was gone, though they wouldn't have much else, they'd always have each other.

* * *

><p><em>Don't panic. Don't panic. Don't panic. <em>

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then opened her eyes and surveyed the clothes that were spread out on the bed before her.

This was easy. This was simple. Just pick out an outfit and be done with it. Just pick out an outfit and then move on to hair and makeup, then leave, and then... go on a date for the first time in over five years. With the technically 96 year old ex-war hero ex-POW ex-brainwashed assassin that had fallen into her life when he fell face-first into her front lawn just over four months ago.

_All right, panic._

She sat down on the bed, trying not to completely lose it, desperately wanting to pick up her phone and scream to somebody, anybody, what was happening, just so she could get it out of her system.

But she couldn't tell Paul, and her list of other people that she could trust was depressingly short, if not nonexistent. She just had to hold it in, get it together, and get ready for her date like a functional adult woman.

But first, she picked up a pillow and screamed into it. It felt oddly pleasant. Then, after dropping it, she looked up at David, her sweet, nonverbal five year old son, who was sitting on the other bed, staring at her like she was completely nuts.

"Thanks for the judgment," she nodded to him. "You get to spend a whole day and night with Captain America and this is how you thank me."

He merely turned his head back to the television he'd been watching, and she blew out a puff of air. Technically, David should be thanking Bucky, since he was the reason why Steve Rogers would be playing babysitter to him tonight. Which brought her back to why she was panicking in the first place.

Of all the ways that she imagined their first meeting would go, after not seeing him for three months following his four week stay at her home in Virginia, being asked out on a date by him was the absolute last thing that she would have expected. And that's why she was so nervous.

It was a date. A real date. It wasn't sharing a home with someone she was initially terrified of before she learned his story and before he saved her and David's life. It wasn't gawking at his occasional shirtless walks from the bathroom to the bedroom, or impulsively kissing him while she was still in shock from watching two HYDRA agents nearly kill her son, or inadvertently distracting him from watching a movie and ending up on his lap with a metal hand up the back of her shirt.

No, this was a date, which is what normal people did when they liked each other. This was sitting down in a public place and eating and talking and whatever else.

What would they talk about? Would they have anything to talk about? Would she end up saying the worst possible things and make him regret even bothering to ask her out?

How would she ever find out if she didn't stop angsting about the date and actually got dressed for it?

Standing resolutely - as much as was possible - she turned and surveyed her choices again. Then, to avoid the trap of trying everything on first and ending up only stressing out more, she grabbed an emerald green wrap dress from the pile of newly bought clothes imported from California and headed off to the bathroom to put it on before she could second guess herself.

Once the dress was on, she looked in the mirror and grimaced. Her makeup from earlier that day was already messed up, and her hair was a bit limp for some reason - lack of humidity? Who knew - and then the dress came off as she decided to hurl herself in the shower. Yes, she decided, showering is good.

She washed her hair twice, possibly to make it smell like her shampoo as much as possible, because she recalled not minding at all when Bucky would bury his nose in it and inhale the scent like it was the best thing he'd ever smelled. Maybe he'd do that again tonight.

Unless he decided that he didn't like her anymore because she turned into a rambling freakshow at dinner. She stared at the bland hotel shower tiles, holding her shampoo bottle, eyes blank as she thought over every possible horrible outcome of the date. And there were plenty to think over.

This was a lot easier when he was just a super dangerous fugitive hiding out in her house who occasionally liked to let her kiss him. Or did she let him kiss her? Either way, that was somehow easier. Now everything was even more surreal, and he looked different, and there was that shorter hair and the fact that he apparently didn't realize that he was potentially ruining lives with his leather jacket.

She groaned and forced herself to snap out of it, turning off the shower and grabbing a towel. Once she was back in front of the mirror and had cleared out a portion of the fog to see herself, she took a determined breath and then eyed the hair dryer that was sitting innocently on top of the bathroom sink. She picked it up similarly to the way one would awkwardly pick up a baby for the first time in their lives, and she decided that if she was going to wear a dress and appear legitimately like a girl tonight, she had to to do girl things, and this was one of them. She thought.

She pushed a button, and then when nothing happened, pushed several buttons. When nothing continued to happen, she kept pushing buttons and then peered into the thing, which was when it snapped to life, sending a blast of hot air into her face. She squeaked and dropped it, then grabbed it before it could fall into the wet sink, and finally, half-growled and turned it towards her hair.

It wasn't the most likely still-quite-unstable former HYDRA killer that she was worried about wrecking the date. No, if she knew anything at all, it was that if the night ended badly, it would be because she had no idea how to do any of this, and she would make that abundantly clear.

On the bright side, she knew that he had no clue either, so at least the playing field was even.

Unless he had remembered more of his older days, and she could imagine that those days had treated him well in terms of female attention. Maybe he did know what he was doing now. Maybe she would be the only idiot there.

Gulping, she did her best to dry her hair, hoping the date would be worth the epic meltdown that she was in the midst of.

* * *

><p>"So... do you remember... dating?"<p>

Bucky looked across the small table to Steve, who had suffered a mild heart attack upon finding out that Bucky had asked Summer out on a date within the first five minutes of seeing her again. To his credit, though, Steve wasn't trying to talk him out of it.

"Not really." Then he thought for a moment, and added, "I do remember dancing. A little bit."

"Then you do remember dating," Steve grinned. "Dancing's changed since then, though. A lot." His grin faded a bit and he furrowed his brows. "It's less like dancing and more like..."

"More like what?"

Steve raised his brows and asked, "Is dancing all you remember? Because I sure had to hear a lot about what you did after you took girls dancing and it kind of got old after awhile."

Bucky's confused expression deepened. He could only vaguely grasp Steve's meaning. "What's that have to with dancing?"

Steve paused for a minute, then smiled. "You know what, never mind. Don't worry about it. Why don't we focus on figuring out where you're gonna take her instead."

Bucky nodded, then watched Steve pull out his phone and start typing into it. "There's one place I've been to," Steve said, "and I think you'd both like it. There's never that many people there, and since this is a Monday, it'll probably be basically empty, so you'll have the place to yourselves. And it's just a couple blocks away."

Steve held up his phone, and Bucky read the name and address of the place in question, then nodded. "Okay."

"And after that," Steve shrugged, "I would just ask her what she likes to do and go from there."

Bucky nodded again, a little but still in shock that this was happening - and that he had made it happen. He didn't know what was more bewildering, the fact that he had asked or the fact that she had said yes.

"And by the way," Steve said, "I cannot believe that I am sitting here giving you dating advice. I'm pretty sure pigs are flying over the building right now."

"Pigs?"

Steve shook his head. "Never mind."

Bucky furrowed his brows and said, "I only remember a couple of girls. Barely."

"Well, there was more than a couple," Steve replied. "Only one though that you ever really liked. The rest you just took out, but there was a girl in the eleventh grade. Her name was Judy."

Judy. He couldn't remember a Judy. Or could he?

"Dark hair, kind of short. Well, taller than I was, but still. You offered to help her with her French class."

"I speak French?" He'd already discovered that he apparently spoke five languages, with no memories of having learned them. This was the sixth. It was unnerving, especially when he'd start writing or speaking in them without fully meaning to.

"Yep. Got her an A. But her dad broke you guys up, because you told him you were going to enlist once you turned 18 and he didn't want his daughter with a soldier who'd leave her."

Something prickled at his mind, and what Steve was saying felt more and more familiar as he spoke. It was hazy, but he could remember a face now, a pretty one, and maybe a soft laugh too? And the color purple... a very light, pastel purple, and a flowery dress, and maybe a bed? The bed was the source of the purple, he realized as he thought more deeply, and the flowery dress on the floor next to it, because he'd put it there.

Oh. "I remember now."

Steve nodded. "I'm sure you do. You spent a lot of time 'teaching her French'," he said, using air quotes.

"And I told you about it?"

"Bucky, you made sure I knew more than I ever wanted to," Steve sighed. "I embarrassed pretty easily back then. And sometimes I wondered if you were making some of it up, because some of it was really..."

"Really what?" a distinctive, low feminine voice inquired, as both men looked up to find a head full of vibrant red hair appear around the corner of the kitchen they were currently seated in. "No, really, go on - I want to hear the end of this story."

Bucky rolled his eyes and sat back in his seat, crossing his arms as Steve gave Natasha a smile that was still mildly shy two months after Bucky watched her sashay back into Steve's life. She came and went as she pleased, and though Steve was hesitant to call her his "girlfriend", even Bucky knew that was crap. And that was saying something.

Since there was only two chairs, she turned Steve's lap into her seat and then looked at Bucky expectantly. "So. Let's hear about these escapades that were so scandalous that poor little Steve thought they couldn't possibly be true."

She also grated on Bucky's nerves more than anything else within the apartment. Possibly the city.

"Uh... well, we got on the subject because Bucky has a date tonight," Steve said cheerfully, and Bucky watched the playfulness fall from the woman's face as turned her gaze to Steve's.

"A date? With a woman?"

"_No, a moose,_" Bucky irritably answered in Russian.

She shot him a glare and answered back in her native tongue, "_Unlucky moose_." Then she looked back to Steve, and he gave her a look that told her to let it go. Bucky rolled his eyes and stood up from the table, heading for his room.

Where Steve had an implicit, possibly to the point of being stupid, trust in him, Natasha had an inherent distrust of him that he knew he deserved but still didn't care to see. The worst part of it was the fact that he couldn't write her off as simply a foolish woman who didn't understand anything about him, because she understood everything about him perfectly, had the experience and the background to prove just how well she did, and she was right not to trust him. It didn't help that she bore two bizarrely symmetrical scars on her body that told the stories of his past sins.

He walked to his bedroom door, then opened it and closed it while remaining in the hallway. Then he leaned against the wall and listened to Steve and Natasha's resulting hushed conversation.

"This is a bad idea, Steve. It's one thing to have him in here or out when he's with you, but -"

"Relax. He's fine. She's good for him. And they aren't going far. He'll be fine."

"And if he isn't? It's New York, Steve. What if someone tries to mug them? What do you think he'll do if he sees or hears something that triggers him? The consequences aren't worth it."

"I've thought of all that, trust me. But... I hate keeping him here all the time. He has no sense of independence, no self-reliance, and I hate that. I hate that, because it's what they did to him. They controlled him and kept him 'stable'. I don't want him to just be stable. I want him to live his life. He deserves to live his life. I owe him that much."

"That sounds great, Steve, but you have to be realistic. At the very least, you need to watch him."

"I can't. I'm watching her son."

He heard a pause. "You're babysitting his date's kid?"

"Yeah. He's a good kid. Big fan, too."

"Wait. Is this the same woman you picked him up from in Virginia?"

"Yep."

"Why is she here?"

"I flew her here."

"Steve..."

"_Natasha_."

"I highly doubt that Dr. Connor would consider him ready to start dating. He's barely ready to go walk down the street and buy a soda by himself."

"I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration."

"And I think you have a problem facing the truth about your friend and what he's capable of."

"I think I know better than anyone what he's capable of, Natasha." Bucky could hear the irritation in Steve's voice.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

Then there was silence for a moment, and eventually he heard the woman sigh. "Well, if you can't watch him, I will. Just this once, though. I have better things to do than babysit grown men."

Bucky clenched his jaw and thought for one fleeting moment about aborting the whole thing. He didn't need Natasha of all people to come and spy on him while he was on a date, and Summer deserved better than that. And now he wasn't sure that he would be able to focus on anything but determining Natasha's position and fuming over her presence throughout the night.

But then, a defiant spark from within told him hell no, go on the date and don't let her have the satisfaction of getting to him. He didn't want Steve defending him any more than he wanted to hear Natasha's suspicious whispers. He was sick of both, and for once, he would like to just have one little tiny bit of confidence in himself that he could walk three blocks with another human being who wasn't Steve and not be provoked into the murderous rampage that Natasha seemed to think was imminent.

He heard movement, but he stayed where he was at. Then he glanced up and saw Steve appear at the end of the hallway, stopping short when he saw Bucky leaning against the wall. Instantly his face became apologetic, realizing that he had heard the conversation. "Bucky -"

"It's fine," Bucky shrugged, walking back to his door and throwing it open before closing himself inside. After all, Steve hadn't done anything wrong. He never did. It was almost annoying sometimes.

He looked around his room blankly for a moment. It was minimally furnished, which was his choice. Just a bed, a small table next to it, and a dresser across the room. Steve had provided a wall mounted flat screen TV that he watched only on occasion. On the left side of his bed, filling the gap between it and the wall, were stacks of books. He'd taken Summer's suggestion and tended to read as much fiction as nonfiction now. Reading helped him think and not think at the same time, in that it kept his thoughts focused on the words on a page and not the voices and images that haunted his mind tirelessly. Staying busy was key. It was just hard to stay busy when he rarely left Steve's apartment.

But, he had better things to think about today. Changing clothes seemed like a good idea, so he did that, only partially though, because he ended up only swapping his shirt for a black button down one, unsure of what else to do. He was unsure about a lot of things, but it was slowly getting better. When he had first let Steve badger him into getting his hair cut, he'd felt even more like an imposter whenever he looked in the mirror. Having only the crudest sense of identity to begin with, suddenly looking identical to the man Steve kept telling him that he was had taken weeks to get used to. But over time, certain things were starting to feel almost right.

This date thing, though - he still didn't understand why he'd done it. It was such an odd concept, and he had no level of comfort for it, regardless of the slowly returning memories.

If he had to guess, though, he'd blame the moment on the lock of hair she had left in his possession and the memories - those few blessed good ones that he had - of her that refused to budge from his mind. He had thought that he would forget her - despite his assurances to the contrary when she'd asked him not to - but he never came close. And he missed her.

But now he had her for a week. He might as well make the most of it.

* * *

><p>By the time Summer was back at Steve's doorstep, she was already exhausted. The effort of dressing, fully fixing her hair, and doing a decent job with makeup (which wasn't as easy as some girls made it look) was more than she'd bargained for, but she was somewhat all right with the outcome. Her hair was down and lightly curled, makeup light for her own comfort, and she had paired a deep burgundy peacoat with her green dress, finishing the outfit with the boots that her feet absolutely hated her for. She even had jewelry on, a silver bracelet and some small diamond earrings that had been a gift years ago. It was the most womanly she had looked since... ever? So it couldn't be too bad.<p>

She knocked on the door, holding David's hand, and when a very familiar redheaded woman opened the door, her mouth opened and she instantly felt like a twelve year old kid under the woman's appraising gaze.

Summer recognized her from the Congressional hearings on the news following all the SHIELD leaks. David immediately leapt behind her, and she didn't blame him for hiding from the Black freakin' Widow.

"And who are you?"

Trying to gather her wits, Summer eventually managed one word, "Summer." It seemed redundant to say anything else, because she wasn't stupid, and she knew that this woman would already know who she was. The only point of her question was to intimidate her. But why?

"Right. So is Barnes the first assassin you've dated or does HYDRA run a dating website I'm not aware of?"

"Uh..."

Natasha rolled her eyes and opened the door fully. "Come in. Steve's helping him fix his hair or something."

Blinking, Summer tried to step inside, but David refused to follow her in. She turned and furrowed her brows. "Sweetie, come on. We talked about this. What's wrong?"

David looked at her, then Natasha, and then covered his eyes with his hands. Summer stifled a laugh, then glanced at Natasha, who looked both bored and confused. "He's scared of you, I think."

Natasha raised an eyebrow and then turned to saunter off. "Smart kid."

It took some convincing, but Summer eventually got David to come inside, even with the scary woman still inside of it. She took him to the leather couch in the living room, and when she sat down, he went back to hiding behind her, smashing his face between the couch and her back. She sighed, hoping Natasha wouldn't be staying, because apparently that would make Steve's job nearly impossible to do tonight.

She tried not to be mildly frightened herself when Natasha walked over from the kitchen, eyeing her curiously. She couldn't help it - the woman was as mesmerizing as she was terrifying.

"How old are you?" Natasha asked, perching causally on the arm of a chair opposite the couch.

"Twenty five," Summer replied, feeling David try to burrow even deeper between her and the couch.

"You must not have parents."

"Nope," Summer confirmed, a little confused by why that mattered. Then she could feel Natasha analyzing her appearance, and she wanted to crawl and hide in a ditch.

"Were you gonna wear your hair like that?"

"Um..." she faltered, definitely feeling like a kid now if she didn't before. But she had worked too long on her hair to have it criticized, even by someone flawless. "Yeah. He likes it down, so." She cringed a little bit. She didn't owe her that explanation.

"Rookie mistake. That's why you put it up. Give him something to take down later."

Well, dang it. Now slightly embarrassed and frustrated, she glanced at the oversized "mom" purse in her hands, knowing she had nothing besides a few hair ties in there. Then she heard Natasha snicker and reach into her jean pocket.

"Here," she said, tossing her a thin, long clip. Summer caught it, then thanked her quietly before gathering her hair and twisting it up the back of her head. She fastened the clip, leaving a few front pieces loose to frame her face, hoping that the ones in the back were curled well enough to look okay. Natasha gave a nod of approval, but Summer found the whole exchange rather odd.

Before things could get anymore awkward, she heard footsteps, and in the hallway, Steve appeared, wearing his usual smile. "Hi. Sorry about that, we were talking and I didn't realize what time it was."

Before Summer could reply, Natasha leaned back and smiled. "I kept her company, don't worry."

Steve gave her a look that was suspicious and amused at the same time. "Great. So, Summer, if you want to give me some guidelines..."

"Right," she said, getting up and digging into her purse as David hung on to her coat from behind and dared to peek once at Natasha. She smiled at him somewhat neutrally, and he quickly hid his face. She chuckled.

"So," Summer began, taking a small bag out of her purse and putting it on Steve's table,as he watched, "this is his tablet. He's addicted to it, and it helps him focus and calm down if something freaks him out. The charger's in there too. I also packed some snacks he likes. He's allergic to peanuts and bananas, and there's an epi-pen in here in case he accidentally gets his hands on either one of those. Oh, and here is..."

As she went on, making obsessively sure that she covered every possible base while Steve listened intently, Bucky emerged from the hallway, his view of his date blocked by Steve's large frame. He glanced at Natasha, who was still perched on the armchair. She gave him a smile and spoke in Russian, "_Have fun_."

"_Stop speaking_," he muttered back, and the sound made Summer fall silent for a moment mid sentence and glance over Steve's shoulder. That was when their eyes met, and Summer was pretty sure that if her heart was going to stop every time he walked into the room or said a word, she was really in for it.

"Um... so anyway," she said, smiling a little and shaking her head, "I think I have everything here for you, and -"

"Hey," Steve smiled reassuringly, "take a breath. I've got this. And if anything happens, I'll call you right away."

She sighed and nodded. "Okay. Thank you. Thank you for everything. I owe you way too much."

He shrugged and shook his head. "Don't worry about it. Have a good night."

She smiled, suddenly nervous all over again, especially now that Bucky was standing next to Steve and she could feel his eyes on her. She almost forgot about the little boy who still refused to budge from behind her legs.

"Catch you later, Steve," Natasha called from the door. "And nice meeting you, Summer."

Summer nodded, though she doubted the truth of that statement. She also noticed the loathing in Bucky's eyes as he watched the woman leave. Once the door was shut behind her, David finally let go of her coat and looked around, apparently now feeling safe again.

"I've never seen him so instantly terrified of someone before," she said, and Steve smiled.

"It's... understandable," he admitted. "All right, well, I'm ready if the two of you are."

With that, Summer nodded and knelt down to hug and kiss her son goodbye, remind him to be good and do everything Steve said even though she had no doubt that he would, and then before she knew it, David was back to bouncing happily and rushing to Steve's side. That left her and Bucky standing in front of the table, and her stomach fluttered as their eyes met again. He looked every bit as good as he had earlier, only darker, and maybe a little bit angry. She was all right with that, but the jacket still deserved a ritual burning.

She smiled and asked softly, "Ready?"

* * *

><p>The fact that the sight of her made him almost entirely forget how angry he was at having Natasha for an invisible babysitter for the night was astonishing. And he knew that whatever was underneath the dark red coat would probably be even better, but the boots were as appealing as they were earlier. He had to drag his eyes away and meet her eyes when she asked her one-word question.<p>

"Yeah," he answered quietly. Something in his head screamed to compliment her, to say something quickly, but he didn't do it. He could all but feel Steve pretending not to watch them, probably smiling stupidly, and he wanted nothing more than to be alone with her. So, he took her left hand in his right one, and walked her to the door.

When she glanced back to tell her son goodbye one more time, Bucky caught the stupid grin on Steve's faced that he'd suspected was there, and he shook his head at him as they walked out the door.

His hand left hers once they were in the building's hallway and the apartment door was closed behind them. He looked at her as she then nervously fiddled with a piece of her hair before seeming to make herself stop, and he decided that he quite liked the fact that she couldn't do a thing to hide her anxiety.

He also felt like now he could pay her the compliment he'd wanted to a moment ago. It still didn't go as planned.

"You... you look..."

She leaned forward slightly, as if he was speaking too quietly for her to hear, and then she let out a surprised yelp as she suddenly stumbled off of her feet. He caught her, with one hand on her shoulder while his other arm caught her around the waist, and her hands clutched at his jacket as she righted herself and laughed.

"Sorry," she said breathlessly, a blush coloring her cheeks as he reluctantly let her go. "It's the shoes. They're like four inches high and I've almost killed myself in them about five times today."

He glanced down at the boots in question, then back up at her face, and his hand slipped into hers again. The metal one, looking to all the world like any other flesh and blood hand, hung at his side as he got them walking again. "I guess you should hang on to me, then."

He guided her down the staircase, down two flights to the floor, and once they were back on flat ground, she asked quietly, "So, do you like it here?"

They stepped out into the chilly night air, and he took a deep breath without realizing. This was the first time he'd been out at night in a long time. "Yeah," he replied as they turned down the sidewalk. He considered keeping his next thought to himself, but spoke it aloud anyway. "I do miss your food."

She laughed. "Really? I mean, I like my food, but I don't get a lot of feedback, so I can never tell if it's actually good or if I'm just used to it."

"No, it's good," he replied.

"Well... that's nice to hear," she said, her hand ending up on his upper arm as they walked. "If you wanted, I could cook for you and Steve sometime this week. Or try to. Knowing my luck it would be the one time I'd screw up and burn something."

He almost told her that she worried too much, but then he caught a glimpse of a woman walking down the other side of the street, and he wondered if it was Natasha in whatever disguise she'd opted for.

"David misses you," Summer said, diverting his attention. "He still draws you all the time. And still makes me create fake metal arms for him every once in awhile. I don't think he recognizes you with the short hair. And your hand like that."

He looked down at his left hand. The cover was the one thing Natasha had been good for so far. "It's one less reminder. Until I take it off, at least."

"I understand," she replied, falling silent for a moment. "It's so weird how it looks completely normal."

"Until you touch it," he said, holding out his left hand to her. She looked up at him before reaching out with her free hand and gently touching the back of his hand. The hologram flickered, then stabilized, pixelated, and returned back to its set image.

"Wow," she marveled. "Can you make it show anything?"

He nodded, returning the hand to his side. The cover only reached to his wrist, barely, so long sleeves were a necessity.

"That's almost creepy. What about faces?" When he nodded, she went on, "Wow, so someone could put that on and wear my face? Not that anyone would want to wear my face. But could they?"

"Yeah," he replied, amused by her reaction to what he thought was a rather routine thing. "But they would have to get one first."

"Right. I guess those are rare?"

"That's what she told me."

"You mean... her, right?"

"Natasha," he nodded. "She's watching us."

"What?"

He cringed a little, but she deserved to know. Summer came to a halt on the sidewalk, when they were just a few doors down from their destination, and he turned towards her with a slight grimace. "She's watching _me_," he amended, somewhat bitterly. "I don't know where she is yet, but she'll be watching all night to make sure I don't snap and kill someone."

She frowned, then thought for a moment. "Did Steve -"

He shook his head. "No, it's not him. It's her." He then looked around, noting all the pedestrians and cabs within his sight, barely having to concentrate at all to fall into the familiar task of scoping out a perimeter, but then he reminded himself that he didn't need to do that tonight. "But she's right to do it."

She watched him for a moment, then linked their arms once more as she replied, "For what it's worth, you seem a lot better to me."

He almost refuted her, almost pointed out that her point of reference would make almost anything seem better, but he kept his mouth shut and then furrowed his brows when they reached the door of the place that Steve had recommended.

"What's this place?" she asked. He had no idea. From the outside, the place looked almost abandoned, what with the sloppy artwork scrawled on the door and rest of the building, and the odd lack of windows. He reached out and opened the door anyway, then made a mental note to roll his eyes at Steve later.

Inside, the odd place revealed itself to be a rather quirky and romantic restaurant, with soft and slightly dim lighting thanks to strings of overhead lights that stretched from one end to another and candlelights on the empty tables. Italian music wafted out from within and he glanced at Summer to find a smile on her face as she looked in, and for that reason, he'd endure the place.

A squat little Italian-speaking man came and greeted them jovially, and when Bucky answered the man in the same tongue as they were hustled to a table, he glanced at Summer out of the corner of his eye and saw her doing a very poor job of hiding her flustered smile.

They were the only patrons in the entire dining room, and their host and server appeared to also be the cook. He left to fetch them menus, and it took Bucky a moment of watching Summer start unbuttoning her coat to suddenly remember that he should help her out of it. He stepped up behind her and hesitated briefly before gently placing his hands at her shoulders as she began to take the thing off. He started to pull it from her, and she looked over her shoulder in surprise, only to blush and smile before letting him take it from her. "Thank you."

He was going to reply, but then he saw her dress, and he decided to look rather than speak. He'd never seen her in any dress before, and this one illuminated the shape and form that the causal attire he remembered hid far too well. It was sleeveless and gathered at the left side of her waist, fitting everywhere perfectly and ending just at her knees, where it gave way to black tights and those cursed boots. The coat had also been hiding silver bracelets on her left wrist, and when it suddenly dawned on him that a girl who lived in t-shirts and jeans did all of his for a night with him, his mouth went dry and the air suddenly felt scarce.

She turned and looked at him with slight concern. "You all right?"

He stood there, her coat over his arm, brows furrowed as one voice told him to tell her that she should dress like this all the time, and then there was another slightly less respectful voice with an even better suggestion, but before he could even register the words and accompanying image in his head, the little Italian man reappeared and went about arranging their chairs next to one another, muttering something about being romantic. Bucky didn't think twice about it, not noticing Summer's not-so-inner brief turmoil before taking her seat, which was only inches away from his, in front of a candlelit table. At the moment, he was more concerned with keeping his filter intact and not horrifying her with verbalizing his thoughts that were seemingly coming out of nowhere.

"Uh," she said quietly as he started half-reading the menu in an attempt to distract himself, "you know I can't read this."

He glanced at her, then the menu, and then he blinked and realized that none of it was in English. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't really notice. Well, Steve said to get the pizza, I think this one here," he said, pointing to a picture, "but if you want I can read the rest to you."

"No, that looks fine," she shrugged. "I'll take his word for it." He nodded, and then she was silent for a moment until she made an observation. "So you speak Italian too."

He nodded. "I'm up to six languages that I know of."

"And you don't remember learning any of them?" He shook his head, and she wondered, "How is that even possible?"

He shook his head slightly, then continued to stare at the menu without seeing it as he answered. "Natasha thinks it's like a computer. You can wipe the hard drive and erase all the data but it still keeps its basic functions."

He glanced at her, afraid of seeing her face become sad or sympathetic at this, but to his relief, she merely considered those words and raised an eyebrow. "Well that's one way of looking at it. Kind of dark, though. And here all I know is bad American English and how to say 'my name is Dora' in Spanish."

Her reference went over his head, but he didn't pay it much mind. "I found out I also speak French today."

She was taking a drink of water when he said this, and he heard her choke slightly before coughing and putting her glass down. "Don't speak French," she said, hiding a smile,

Unconsciously, he angled more towards her and looked at her curiously. "Why?"

"Just don't. I mean it."

She was smiling too much to really mean what she was saying, and he thought that was interesting. There was even the start of a blush on her cheeks. "Why?" he asked again.

"Just... because," she said, still smiling and avoiding looking at him. "Forget I said anything."

He could only conclude that she actually wanted to hear him speak the language, because nothing else could possibly make sense.

He didn't take his eyes off of her as she pretended to be interested in her water glass, the silly smile lingering on her face the longer he watched her try to fight it off. He was slipping back into his old staring habits, despite the fact that he had made a lot of progress in that area since living with Steve. Probably because he didn't have anything worth staring at until now.

Suddenly, he remembered that he still had yet to complement her. But just as he opened his mouth, the Italian man reappeared to take their orders at the very same moment. By the time he left, Bucky realized he still had no idea how to accurately convey how positively perfect she looked to him without sounding like an idiot. And it wasn't helping that growing parts of his mind kept throwing things out at him that he was fairly sure he could not repeat out loud, regardless of what decade he was living in.

And anyway, it was not the most opportune time to have that sort of awakening, as refreshingly human as it was.

"You look like you're doing some intense thinking," she noted. When he turned his gaze to hers, he found her smiling lightly. He merely gave a slight shake of his head, leaning back in his seat a few inches and getting a better view of her seated figure. He didn't know why his eyes kept flying to her legs like magnets were pulling them there.

"And I see you're still as subtle as an elephant," she chided gently, smiling from the corner of her eye. "I'm actually glad for that. Gives me less stuff to overthink."

He eyed her for a moment, thinking that if she already thought he lacked all subtlety, then he could get away with what he was about to do with no fear of repercussion. Besides, she wouldn't understand the words anyway.

Throwing caution to the wind, he slowly leaned forward towards her, watching her stiffen slightly as he did, stopping just before his lips could touch her ear. Then he spoke in a low, hopefully seductive tone, "_Tu es magnifique, ce soir, mais j'aimerais autant te voir porter ces chaussures et rien d'autr_e."

* * *

><p>He may as well have gleefully dumped a bucket full of hot, burning coals down her dress, and she was absolutely positive now that she officially hated him.<p>

Having no idea what in the world he had just said to her and unsure if it even mattered, she closed her eyes for a moment and then blinked, the term "flutter" not doing justice to what was happening inside as she slowly looked up at him after he drew away. He was wearing the same almost-smile that she had seen on him earlier, and he looked way too satisfied with himself.

"I told you not to - to... what did you say?"

He shook his head and met her gaze, and she saw a playful glint there. Playful. What was she supposed to do with that? She was used to seeing pain and misery and ghosts in those eyes, not playfulness. It did not compute. Much like the seductive French in her ear had roughly the same effect on her brain that an atom bomb had over an unsuspecting city.

"What did you say?"

"I'm not telling you,"

"Then why did you say it?"

"Because I wanted to."

She almost groaned in frustration. "Just tell me! Please?"

He glanced at her, then gestured to the purse at her feet. "I'm sure you can use your phone to translate. Steve does."

"Yeah, if I had a clue how to write what you said," she replied. "Are you really not going to tell me?"

He shook his head, and she wanted to rip her hair out. But before she could consider such a display, their dinner arrived, and she realized that she was probably going to be languishing in ignorance for a very long time. And frustration. A lot of that. Maybe more of that than anything.

How utterly diabolical. She couldn't dismiss his actions as being innocent or oblivious anymore after that - _no_, there was no questioning that he knew exactly what he was doing now, and that changed everything.

The food was good, even better because she was absolutely starving after possibly forgetting to eat anything else that day, but the longer that there was silence between them, the more time she had to overthink. Were other girls like this when they went on dates, or was it only her and was it Steve's fault for telling Bucky to take her to a place like this? The occasionally flickering candlelight on the table and dreamy overhead lights only served to make his hair look almost black and his eyes like the calm before a storm, and it was so not helping anything.

She didn't realize that she was staring, because she was vaguely contemplating using his image as inspiration for a character in a story - if she ever managed to actually write one, of course. If she ever wrote such a thing, she would make his character a cocky jerk who liked to torture women by speaking mysterious things to them in languages they didn't understand. He'd be dangerous and unpredictable, but in the end, he would end up on the right side of it all. Mostly. Maybe he'd blow up a few buildings along the way, so she could write an entire paragraph describing the way in which he would confidently swagger away from the explosions. Then, just when her imaginary readers would be on the cusp of utterly hating him, she would let a glimpse of his vulnerability and haunted eyes win them all back, and then she would delete it all and start over because she would hate every word she typed. In other words, the usual process.

She snapped out of it when the little Italian man came to ask them more questions that she didn't understand. She tried to smile and express her liking of the food that way, and then she watched with amusement as the man began asking Bucky questions and talking very animatedly with him. The man gestured to her a few times, and Bucky seemed to be getting a bit flustered or frustrated, one of the two, and finally the man merely gave a hearty laugh and left their bill on the table.

"What was all that?" she asked, and Bucky shrugged.

"He was curious. Asked a lot of questions."

"Like what?"

He shrugged and fished for a wallet that he produced a moment later, and she was pretty sure that whatever was in there belonged to Steve. She had no idea how much money the man had and she really despised how much he was continuing to spend for her benefit, but since he acted like it was all inconsequential, maybe it was. She still didn't like it.

"How long we've been dating," he replied without looking her way. "Things like that."

"Oh. Well, I think that if I'm gonna have any hope of keeping up with you, you're going to have to teach me some of your languages."

"I think I like it better like this."

She tried not to roll her eyes at him. Of course he did. But she already felt like she was at a distinct disadvantage here, and the language barriers weren't helping. On top of that, her anxiety over leaving David with someone else for the first time in years was starting to get to her, and she didn't even notice how often she kept checking her phone to make sure there were no messages from Steve.

They left before the Italian man could come back and ramble some more, and she failed miserably at trying not to smile when Bucky helped her back into her coat. It was similar to the way that he opened doors for her and had already managed to treat her better than she had ever been before, and though that wasn't a difficult standard to beat, it was still incredibly nice.

Once they were back outside, the ache in her feet began protesting being forced to walk again, but she held his arm for support again as they paused outside of the restaurant.

"So, what now?" she asked with a smile.

He gave a light shrug and replied honestly, "I have no idea."

She laughed at his answer, then looked around the streets. There was only a moderate amount of folks out, but they were not the only couple. Most were headed away from the direction in which they came, so she turned back to him and said, "Let's just walk and see what we find."

He gave her a look and she simply smiled, pulling him with her as she started to walk. After a moment or two, she asked quietly, "So, is she watching us right now?"

"She's the blonde walking her dog," Bucky replied. "Don't look. Don't give her the satisfaction."

She did as he said, wondering where the dog came from and if the surveillance really was necessary. Bucky seemed good, a lot better than she thought three months could do, but she also knew it wasn't as simple as that.

"So... her and Steve?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"You don't sound like you like her much," she observed. He didn't reply, and she decided it best to change the subject, not wanting to discuss terrifying spies that he seemed to loathe.

Before she could think of a better topic of discussion, the sound of what had to be a gunshot crackled through the air, and before she could register the sound, she was tossed against a wall and pinned there by her date's left arm.

His sudden throwing of her startled her far more than the gunshot, and as her heart pounded in her ears, she looked around him and saw a group of teenagers laughing and cursing as they ran off down the street, yelling "boom!" and trying to get away as fast as they could.

"It was just some stupid kids, Bucky, we're all right," she said, hiding the shake in her voice well. When he didn't answer, she tried to pry his arm away to no avail, then settled on reaching her hand to his face and pulling him towards her.

It took a few tries and she said his name many more times, but eventually he finally looked at her. She looked him in his suddenly confused, distant eyes as she held his face and said calmly, "Bucky, it was kids. Nothing happened. Nothing happened."

It took him a bit, and she had to repeat her assurances a few more times, but eventfully, he nodded, and she breathed as he finally dropped his arm off of her. She watched him blink once-more present eyes and look around, and unmistakeable disappointment flashed across his face. As he started staring across the street, she took his hand in hers and tugged him back to her. "Hey. It's all right. Really."

"Did I hurt you?" he asked quietly, and she quickly shook her head.

"No. Thank you for doing what you did. If it had actually been something bad, I would have been safe, so... thank you."

He looked unconvinced, and he gently eased his hand out of hers. "I'll... take you back if you want."

"What? No," she protested a little too quickly, too eagerly, making him furrow his brows and her cringe a little bit. "No, I don't want to go back yet. I mean, unless you want to. I can only imagine what went through your head when you heard that, so..."

After she trailed off, they stood there in indecision, and she knew that for as different and more... human that he seemed to be now, every day still had to be a struggle for him. Looking in his eyes now was like looking into them back at home, in Virginia, when he would stare off and she would try to bring him back to reality before he spent the whole day like that.

"Do you want to go back?" she asked softly, and he took his gaze off of the street and looked across it, to the woman with her dog, who was pretending to browse on her phone as she sat on a bench.

She watched his jaw tighten and his eyes clear up some, and he turned back to her and shook his head. "No."

Then he took her hand again, and she gave him an encouraging smile as they began walking again. She could deal with moments like those, expected them even. She might not be able to comprehend his level of trauma and haunting, painful memories, or really know much about them at all aside from what she had read because he had never shared much with her, but she knew what flashbacks could do to a mind. She just had no idea what sort his last one had been, and she wasn't going to ask, either. She'd rather take his mind away from it.

But what to talk about? She started wracking her brain to come up with something to distract him with, but as usual, all she got was a giant blank. Her brain had a habit of being good for nothing when she actually needed it.

Then they walked past a slightly shady-looking building, and the door opened and two drunken girls in too-small, too-short dresses spilled out of it, giggling to themselves as they started half-stumbling down the sidewalk. Out of curiosity, Summer glanced inside the still-open door, and Bucky did too, and after the door slammed shut, they stood there for a moment, staring at it.

"So that's what Steve meant when he said dancing is different now."

Summer glanced at him and then said, "I'm not sure that everybody dances like that." She paused. "I hope."

Shaking off the image of glitter-covered bodies writhing to bad dubstep, they kept walking, and Summer asked, "Was dancing as big in the 40s as the movies say it was?"

"I think so," he replied. "I remember it."

"Were you good?" she asked with a smile.

"I don't remember any complaints," he answered, making her smile grow.

She could picture him all those years ago, in an Army uniform and free of the ghosts of his future, smiling freely and dancing giggling girls around some smoky room full of other couples. It would have been nice to know him back then, before all the light turned to dark.

"What about you?"

She looked up, having not expected his question, and she stifled a laugh. "Uh, no. No, I don't dance. Like ever."

"Don't like it?"

"Honestly, I've never had the chance to do it, aside from a couple dances in high school," she shrugged. "And those weren't all that fun."

"Well, if I ever remember enough of it," he said, "maybe I could teach you."

"So you'll teach me how to dance," she smiled, "but you won't translate your French for me."

"Nope."

"I'm not gonna stop bugging you about that," she said, just as they approached a set of open doors with music pouring out softly into the streets. It was real, live music, not the purely electric sounds they'd heard earlier, and Summer stopped for a moment to peer inside the place.

It was a small club with a jazzy retro feel, free for the night according to the sign outside, and host to a small band of older folks playing and a moderate number of patrons, who came from all ages and backgrounds, mostly couples. The air was smoky and a little dark, similar to her movie-like image from a moment ago, and she turned to Bucky and raised her eyebrows in question. "Wanna try jogging those dancing memories?"

"Uh..."

She gave his hand a light pull and smiled. "You can't possibly look worse than me."

"I really don't remember how..."

She shrugged. "Maybe it's like riding a bike, you know? And think about how easy it was to remember how to kiss. Dancing could be the same way."

She made herself blush saying that, and she was pretty sure that was pathetic. But, she must have been convincing, because Bucky finally caved, with just a hint of a grin on his lips. "All right, fine."

She smiled as they walked inside, and then she quickly found a corner for them to stand in for the moment. The song being played was a bit slow, heavy on horns and rich to her ears, and the couples were all in their own separate little worlds as they danced around. She didn't think it was really the kind of music that Bucky would have been familiar with, but it was probably the closest thing she could manage tonight. What was the worst that could happen?

Bucky stood to her side and slightly behind her as she watched, considering whether or not to take the initiative and drag him out and dance very badly with him and at least try to make him laugh. In the midst of debating this, she felt a slight tickle at her temple, and turned slightly to find him brushing a piece of her hair aside. She looked in his eyes and saw the same intensity that she used to see there, the single-focused potency that had forever altered her perception of what constituted "eye contact". She stopped breathing when he glanced down at her lips, then started again when he brought both of his hands to her shoulders to pull her coat off again. He draped it on the back of a chair at a nearby table, then took her hand.

"I hope your expectations are low," he said as he led them towards the other couples, and she felt a short thrill of anxiety and excitement.

The song changed, but the moderately slow tempo remained, and then they were face to face and awkwardly still for a moment. She could tell that he was trying to remember as he took one of her hands in his and then stared at his left hand, which would flicker if it touched anything too much, and she knew better than most how quickly too much thinking could ruin something. So, trying to shake him out of his own head, she slipped her hand away and put her arms around his neck instead.

His eyes snapped to hers, and being brave, she stepped closer to him, having no idea what she was doing. Her ears suddenly felt hot and her pulse was chugging right along, and the way that he stared at her was making it exponentially worse. Then she stepped to the side, turning him slightly, and then burst out laughing at herself.

"I'm sorry, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just trying to help," she said, trying to contain her giggles. She took to watching her feet, which were not happy considering how much they hurt, and then shivered when she felt his hands run down the tops of her arms and gently ease them down. She glanced to his left one and saw it flickering, but in the slightly dim lighting, it was hard to see. The false image didn't make the metal any less cool to the touch, but she thought it was the pleasant kind of cold.

His right hand took her left, and slowly, he spun her in a small circle. It would have looked oddly slow to anyone watching, but she smiled at him as she tried not to trip over her own feet, willing to go along with anything that would get him feeling comfortable with his own steps. It was all fine until he pulled her closer, then took her wrist and draped her arm around his neck, bringing her close enough to kiss if either of them barely leaned in.

Her lips were slightly parted as she stared at his, barely aware of how he was leading her in small steps, and completely unaware of how she was grasping at the leather jacket he'd never shed. It was impossible to think when she was this close to him, sharing the same breaths with him, daring to glance up and meet his eyes, almost instantly regretting it for how her heart nearly stopped again.

Then she let out a small shriek of surprise when he spun her again, more quickly this time and further out, and she almost tripped more times than she could count by the time he pulled her back. She laughed and put her arms around his neck again, warming at the sight of his small smile returning to his face. She ached to see a full, real smile from him.

"Is it all coming back to you?" she asked quietly, taking a chance and letting her fingers just graze the short hairs at the back of his head. It was a small touch and far from what she'd been wanting to do to his hair all day.

"Maybe," he said, before grasping her hand and spinning her a few more times, helping her get used to it and learn how to avoid tripping herself up.

Just when she thought she was halfway used to dancing, at Ieast somewhat, he swept her off her feet, literally, by surprising her with a low dip. She laughed again, maybe even giggled - giggled? - and almost couldn't resist the urge to kiss him after he pulled her back upright. She came close, staring down at his lips and not even trying to wipe the grin off of her face, feeling oddly gutsy for one short moment, but just as she came close to taking the plunge, he spun her out again, this time with far different results.

She was fine on the way out, but on the way in, she misjudged a step and her left ankle twisted slightly, making her gasp at the fleeting pain and then lose her footing entirely. She attributed what happened next to her impressive ability to take something embarrassing and make it much worse than it needed it to be, but all things considered, falling in such a way that Bucky's attempt to catch her sent them both hurtling to the ground with her on top of him really wasn't so bad.

He landed half-sitting, and she was sprawled over him, face against his chest, and though she was laughing, she lifted up the left side of his jacket and hid her face with it. She knew the other folks were laughing at her, not in a mean spirited way, but still, it was her natural reaction to hide. But, with her ear pressed to Bucky's chest through his black shirt, she heard a rhythmic rumbling that she first thought she was imagining. But then she felt it too, and when she stopped hiding and raised her head to look at him, what she saw was shocking.

He was not only smiling in the way she had only dreamed about previously, but he was laughing. Genuinely laughing, and the sound pierced through the music and the noise effortlessly, and all at once, she simply felt too much. The smile was every bit as perfect as she knew it would be, and the laugh was as welcome as it was unexpected.

And then, once again, she burst out laughing at herself, at it all, and the moment couldn't have been better.

He helped her get up soon thereafter, and their exit was not far behind. She couldn't keep the smile off her face, at least until they made their way back outside and her feet told her that they were absolutely done. It burned to walk, and she made a mental vow to never wear the boots again regardless of how good they looked.

She tried not to let it show, but her slower steps caught Bucky's attention within moments. "Did you get hurt when you fell?"

She shook her head. "No, not at all. It's the boots. My feet are killing me. But I'll be all right. Just ignore me."

She put on a brave face and kept walking, but he stopped her and looked at her as if he was not impressed in the least. Then he glanced down at her feet, then her face, and then started to kneel down. Her eyes widened. "What - what are you - no, no, put me down!"

Scooping her up like she weighed little more than a leaf blowing in the wind, he set off down the sidewalk with one word to the protesting woman in his arms. "Hush."

She groaned, half loving it and half dying, pressing her face into his jacket and muttering, "I can walk, really, you don't have to carry me down the street... Bucky..."

But regardless of how she whined or pled, he pretended not hear her, and she realized how slowly he'd been walking all night for her sake. She also popped up her head and realized that he was not walking in the direction she'd expected. "Where are you going?"

"Back to your hotel."

"But - David -"

"Steve can bring him over," Bucky said dismissively, and Summer instantly quieted down, because she was trying to remember the state that she left the room in when she left, and she needed to figure out if she was going to be humiliated by him seeing it.

Her purse was dangling oddly from her elbow, and she started trying to maneuver it open to dig her phone out of it, but then she thought about it, and maybe it would be better to wait to tell Steve about the change of plans. It would be a very short trip from his apartment to her hotel, and the longer she waited, the more time alone she would have with Bucky. But, worry quickly overtook the thought, and she resumed her search for the phone and ended up texting Steve anyway.

Afterwards, while resting her head against Bucky's shoulder, she asked quietly, "Are people staring?"

"I don't know."

Of course he didn't. She wondered if Natasha was watching them still, but she didn't ask about that. Instead, her thoughts drifted to something that she had almost forgotten about from her days with David's father.

"I broke my arm when I was eighteen," she said quietly, feeling oddly soothed by the walk. "I was with David's father back then, and I was at his house and we were goofing off in the basement. The stairs were really old and he was chasing me up them and one broke when I stepped on it, so I fell and that's when my arm broke. At first he told me I was being a baby and didn't believe me that I'd actually hurt myself. He wouldn't take me to the hospital because he said he had to get up early the next day for work and wouldn't get any sleep if he took me, and besides, I was just exaggerating. So I had to call a friend to come and pick me up from his house and take me." When Bucky looked at her with slight confusion, she explained, "I'm telling you this so you understand why I'm acting weird. I'm not used to things like this."

He frowned, but stayed silent. She didn't need him to say anything. She just wanted him to understand at least partially why she was the way that she was.

The walk to the hotel was exceedingly quick, and once there, he carried her up the stairs, ignoring the looks they got from hotel staff, and when they reached her door, he still wouldn't put her down, so she had to fumble with her purse through the abyss within it to find her keycard. Once that task was finally over and her door opened, she expected him to set her on her feet at last. He did not. He flipped the light on with his shoulder, closed the door behind him with his foot, and carried her to the bed that was not covered in every piece of clothing that she had brought with her. He set her down carefully on the side of it, then silently sat next to her, too close for her own comfort.

Their eyes met, and when she opened her mouth to thank him, he unexpectedly leaned forward and grabbed the calf of her leg that was closest to him, then pulled it into his lap. She kept her jaw from dropping by chewing on her lip while he found the zipper on the outer part of the boot, then pulled it down and lifted the torturous thing away from her at last.

He repeated the process with her other boot, and she found herself remaining at a loss for words with her feet in his lap. She noticed his hand cover flickering annoyingly with everything he did, and to her surprise, he poked at something near his wrist and then peeled the thing off before stuffing it in his jacket. She felt oddly relieved at the change, but it was short lived, because while she'd been distracted with the sight of his metal hand, his other had gone on to start rubbing one of her feet.

It took her by surprise, and between that and the sheer relief of his touch on her poor foot, a sound escaped out of her mouth that she realized, with horror, sounded a lot like a moan. She froze and then looked at him, knowing that her face was probably the color of a strawberry, given the amused look in his eye.

But it felt good. He only used his flesh and blood hand, and he didn't watch what he was doing, opting instead to look over the rest of her, all while no words were spoken.

He had yet to even kiss her, and she already felt on the verge of hyperventilating.

When his hand ran over her ankle, she met his gaze and held her breath as she watched him gently ease her feet from his lap and lean forward. Her mind went blank, then sputtered back to life when he only started undoing the belt and buttons of her coat, which she had forgotten she was still wearing. The thing was, he stared in her eyes as he did this, and she wondered if he was simply trying to make her scream from the tension before his lips so much as touched hers.

She shrugged off the coat and let it sit in a pile behind her on the bed, and then she watched his eyes drop as he appeared to start searching for words. A few seconds went by before he said quietly, "I tried to tell you earlier, but..." He paused, then met her gaze and said sincerely, "You're beautiful."

"I... I tried," she said dumbly, having difficulty speaking through the lump in her throat. He was too close and she would explode and possibly weep if he didn't kiss her before there was a knock at her door. "Is that what you said in French?"

The corner of his lips curved slightly, and he shook his head. "Not exactly."

"Will you tell me now?"

He shook his head again, and when she opened her mouth to protest, that was when he finally kissed her.

Lightning struck her chest and her hands took refuge in his hair as his lips became the whole of her existence for a moment. She almost missed an odd whimpering sound that floated past her ears, and some vague part of her brain registered with slight horror that she had made the sound, but she could not bring herself to care. He kissed her like it was all that he had wanted to do these last four months, and she kissed back with equal fervor, unaware that her hands had moved to his shoulders until she noticed they were pushing his jacket off of his arms. He broke away, let the thing fall on the floor, and then trailed his eyes to her hair. His hand soon followed, and as he took her hair down, she found that she had one thing to be grateful to Natasha for. He tossed the clip aside as if it had personally wronged him and then resumed his ravaging kiss, now able to thoroughly wreck her hair in the process.

It was, at once, just like their time in Virginia and nothing like it at all, because it was amplified beyond what she could remember, and he kissed her with a sense of confidence that he had lacked before. It was only a subtle spark of confidence, but the difference that it made was intoxicating.

His kisses eventually made their way to her neck, and as she clawed mindlessly in his hair, which felt softer now than it had when it was long, she gave no thought to what would happen in a week when she had to go home and resume normal life. Thinking could come later.

Both of them breathing heavily, he left her neck and raised his head, then leaned his forehead against hers, all while his fingers never left her hair. She didn't want him to stop, so she took his face within her hands and pulled him back, matching the heat of his kisses with one of her own, and this time it was he who whose voice escaped his throat in a fleeting but deep groan against her lips.

Within moments, she found herself on her back, having been gently eased there by two cautious but driven hands, and it was as she lay there beneath him savoring and shivering under his kiss and his hands that were flirting with the hem of her dress, that a knock on the door brought an abrupt halt to it all.

They both froze, she with one hand in his hair and the other fumbling poorly with the buttons of his shirt, and he with his left hand planted on the bed beside her head and his other sliding up the back of her thigh. Then there was another knock, and Summer shot up so quickly that she almost bashed their heads together in the process.

She sat up straight, looked at Bucky and tried not to groan a little at his flushed, heavy lidded-look, then began trying to subdue her hair with her hands to make it less obvious what they had been doing. When she realized that was impossible, she smoothed down her dress and stood, hurrying to the door.

She opened it and was instantly mauled by her son, who had apparently missed her a great deal. Laughing, she picked him up and hugged him tight, stepping aside for a somewhat sheepish-looking Steve Rogers to enter.

"Thank you again," she said as he walked inside, setting David down on his feet and asking, "Was he good? No freakouts? Did he listen to you?"

"He was a champ," Steve assured her with a smile. "We had fun. We watched all my old Captain America films from the war and ordered pizza."

She smiled and mussed her boy's hair, then asked, "Did he eat? He barely eats when his routine's thrown off."

"He ate two whole pieces," Steve replied, to her shock. "I told you had nothing to worry about."

She smiled. "Thank you, again."

He nodded, then looked from her to Bucky, who was standing nearby with his hands in his pockets, giving absolutely nothing away. "So, you guys have a good time?"

Summer nodded. "Yeah, we had a great time. Thank you for making it happen," she said, mentally screaming at herself to stop thanking the poor man. She glanced over at Bucky, then down at her own barefoot, slightly disheveled image, and cringed a little.

"No problem. Any plans for the rest of the week?"

As they chatted, Bucky took his left hand from his pocket and used it to pick up his jacket from the floor, which did not escape Steve's notice. David started paying attention too, and when he saw the gleam of the metal hand, his eyes lit up with recognition.

He ran over to Bucky, who didn't notice him until he reached up and tugged at his shirt to get his attention. Bucky looked down, and David beamed up at him before launching himself forward in a big five year old hug.

From the corner of her eye, Summer saw this, and lost her train of thought as she turned her full attention on her son and the man that he had missed. Bucky's return hug was every bit as awkward as the one he'd given David the day that he left her home, but it brought a smile to her face. She glanced at Steve, who watched himself curiously before glancing at her.

"He's missed the guy with the cool arm," she explained while David finally ended the hug and wandered off towards his toys. Then she smiled at Bucky, who seemed unsure of what had just happened, and then Steve brought the night to a close.

"All right, well, we'll leave you two alone now, I'm sure you're both ready to catch up on your sleep. You're welcome to come over whenever you want."

She nodded, then watched Steve bid her son goodbye while Bucky had thrown his jacket on and was fiddling with the holographic cover that was back on his hand.

Steve was the first to make for the door after saying his goodbyes, and Summer smiled as Bucky crossed the room to follow him. He stopped in front of her, and before she could wonder what he was about to do, he leaned in and left a small kiss on her cheek before muttering near her ear, "_Bonsoir_."

She narrowed her eyes at him after he pulled away, that maddening playful look back in his eye, and she shook her head as he walked to the door. "Jerk."

"You're not the first to say so," Steve assured her with a smile. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," she called after both men, just before Bucky closed the door with one last glance to her. She sighed, then walked to the nearest of the double beds and collapsed on it face first.

_I'm not going to survive this week._

**A**/**N: Aaaaaaand the sequel! And as you can see, I was not kidding when I said that the first chapter was gigantic. All the chapters I've got so far for this average around 10,000 words, which makes them obviously take longer to write but are much better, in my opinion. I'll try to stick to once-weekly updates, and I hope you guys will like this story as much as the first :) there will definitely be more characters involved and, you know, actual personality from Bucky, which hopefully I won't screw up too badly. My thanks to you wonderful readers, and to midnightwings96 for being an invaluable help as always, being my sounding board and always helping out with ideas and generally being awesome. I'll see you guys next week, and let me know what you all think! :D**

**Oh, and as for the French-to-English translation Bucky won't provide, here it is, UPDATED from its previous Google translation thanks to PicoBogue, who was kind enough to leave a lovely review and a revision of what I had before. **

**Tu es magnifique, ce soir, mais j'aimerais autant te voir porter ces chaussures et rien d'autre:**

**You look beautiful tonight, but I'd rather see you in the shoes and nothing else.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N #1: Big fat trigger warning for mentions of rape in the first section of this chapter. Nothing explicit but it's major enough that I actually remembered to add a trigger warning for once in my life**.

Groggily, Summer woke up to bright rays of the sun assaulting her eyes through their lids, and she groaned and buried her face into her pillow. She planned on sleeping for as long as possible, regardless of how adamant the sun was on waking her, but she froze and abandoned that plan when she felt a hand slide across her back.

Opening her eyes, she saw not typical neutral hotel room walls that she had fallen asleep in, but the familiar walls of her bedroom back home in Fall's Church. The sheets that she was burrowed in were her own, and as she slowly turned to see whose hand was upon her, she held her breath, unable to stop the grip of fear from overtaking her. Luckily, she still slept with her gun under the pillow.

But, as it turned out, when she saw who was sitting on the side of the bed, her fear dissipated and a small smile grew on her face. "Bucky. You scared the crap out of me."

He was dressed exactly as he had been on their date, and he gave her a half-smile as she shifted to her back. That was when she realized that she was also dressed the same way, boots and all, and with confusion, she looked from herself to the man sitting beside her. "What's going o-"

A single metal finger to her lips quieted her, and the chill of it sent a shiver down her spine as he shifted, leaning forward and placing himself over her. "Quiet. Trust me."

She furrowed her brows and felt clear and distinct unease unfurl from within, but then his finger left her lips and he kissed her with a fury that made her mind go blank.

Still, it didn't feel right. His kiss wasn't right, the words were not his own, and the way that his hands grabbed and pulled carelessly at her dress was completely off. Everything within her told her to be afraid of him, but this was Bucky; she had only feared him when she first met him. He had never hurt her, not on purpose, and this strange, sloppy aggression was not something she had ever experienced at his hand.

"Bucky," she said when his lips left hers to attack her neck while he yanked at the skirt of her dress, "wait, stop - please, I don't -"

He continued on anyway, and when she tried to push him off enough to get a few inches between them, he grabbed her wrists and pinned them next to her head. Another prickle of fear shot through her, then magnified when she looked up and saw the slightly crazed look in Bucky's eye. She noticed then that he didn't smell right, either. He smelled like cheap beer and cigarettes, which made no sense, because she was fairly sure that he was physically unable to get drunk, and he didn't smoke.

Somewhere in her head, she knew exactly what was happening, because she had relived this moment hundreds of times before, just not quite like this.

"I told you, be quiet. Trust me for once."

She struggled against his hold, to no avail, as she began to panic. "Bucky, please, you're scaring me -"

His metal hand closed over her mouth, muffling her voice and silencing her as he hummed _shhh_ over and over while her eyes widened and began to fill with tears. His eyelids drooped slightly and his voice began to slur as he said, "You know you want it. You've made us both wait long enough."

His hand stayed over her mouth, and nothing she did to try to fight him off worked. She was helpless and stuck where she was, and the tears that fell from her eyes and the muffled cries of pain and fear did nothing to stop the man above her from doing what he pleased. She was trapped, a useless witness to her own assault at the hands of someone she had trusted. It felt like it went on forever, each second stretching into its own unique, torturous eternity, marked by blood and broken skin and the drunken grunts of a man she would forever hate following that day.

In his fervor, his metal hand unintentionally slipped an inch upwards and covered her nose in addition to her mouth. Fresh panic burst forth within her, and her cries became barely-heard screams as she slowly suffocated.

Her vision blurred, the ceiling fading from view, and though she felt herself losing consciousness, she never stopped fighting. She never stopped screaming, struggling, and clinging to the life she held that would never be the same once this was over.

With a mix of a scream and a gasp, Summer shot up in bed, sweat-soaked and hysterical until reality sunk in enough to convince her that it was over, the nightmare was over, and she was safe in her New York City hotel room.

It was well into the morning, almost noon already, and she looked down at her shaking hands as she breathed raggedly before lowering her head into them and trying to calm herself down. It had been a long time since she'd had that particular nightmare, and the fact that Bucky had played the part of David's father was a stark example of how particularly cruel and twisted her mind could be to her own self.

Breathing steadily in and out, consciously doing so, she winced at a tear that rolled down her cheek. She'd cried enough tears over that particular night, relived it enough for several lifetimes since it had happened over five years ago, and she did not want to waste anymore tears or thoughts over it. But, whenever she thought she had overcome it completely and was done letting it haunt her, something like this would happen, and she would be reminded that traumatic events were not something one simply "got over", perhaps ever.

One day, she was sure that she would have a whopper of all her nightmares, meshing that one and her other most common one, the night that HYDRA had nearly killed her and her son, just to make it as horrifying as possible.

But, despite the lingering horror and pain of the memory of struggling to breathe under a hand that had most certainly not been metal in real life, she calmed eventually and drew a deep breath as she lifted her head and looked around the room. David was still asleep, the room was bathed in morning light, and the street outside was as noisy as one would expect in NYC. She remembered why she was here, who she was here for, and the date that she'd had last night, and it sickened her that Bucky would ever be conjured up in a dream in such a way. Whatever his faults, whatever his past, he had no place in her nightmares, none at all.

Then she started to feel anger eclipse the horror. She had given Mark enough power over her for long enough, wasting time and energy hating him and letting what he did haunt her mind and push her straight into a breakdown when she had found out that she was pregnant from that night. He didn't get to have the slightest influence anymore, not here, not now.

With a determined sigh, she got up out of bed and walked to the bathroom. Her feet were still sore after the previous night, but she didn't notice as she made a beeline for the sink and proceeded to splash her face with water and metaphorically wash away the utter stupidity of the dream.

She grabbed a hand towel to wipe her face, then wondered why in the world her mind would even go there in the first place. The nightmare itself was one thing, but Mark was always Mark. Nobody else ever stepped in to fill the role of drunk loser boyfriend who decided to take advantage of his girlfriend at the worst possible time. And if an exception to that rule was to be made, why couldn't it have been someone random like an actor she hated, like Matt Damon, whom she irrationally despised for no reason? Why did it have to be Bucky, of all the men in the world?

Because your brain sucks, she thought as she looked at her reflection, unimpressed with what she saw. She was oddly pale and she could all but see the scenes replay behind her blue eyes, and it was just disheartening to think that these dreams may never leave entirely. Maybe they'd just evolve and find new ways of disturbing her and starting her days horribly, like this day, Exhibit A.

Suddenly feeling exhausted all over again, she trudged back to bed and climbed in, grabbing her phone off the nightstand as she did. Sitting with her back to the headboard, she opened her phone and found two unread messages.

The first was from Paul. _Don't tell me you've never been hearin' of Sirius Black! He's a murrrrrrdererrrrrr"_

She rolled her eyes but grinned anyway. While it was normal for him to text her random Harry Potter quotes, he'd been sending ones about murderers and Voldemort since her confession in California that she was, in fact, somewhat involved with someone, and that she couldn't tell him who it was or anything about him. Naturally, he thought she was in love with Patrick Bateman or a Potterverse equivalent of him.

_It's too early for Stan Shunpike. And my week in New York is going fine, thanks for asking_. After sending that reply, she moved on to the next message, which was from her vacation's funder.

_Looks like it's gonna rain all day, so come on over whenever you like and we can make Bucky catch up on some movies or something. I didn't tell you this, but he's waiting very impatiently for you guys to wake up._

She smiled a little, then typed a quick reply that told Steve that David wasn't yet awake but she'd get over there hopefully within an hour or two. Then her phone buzzed with a new message from Paul.

_Well, I figured I wasn't allowed to ask because of all the secrecy. I have a brilliant new theory btw. I've put all the pieces together and come to the conclusion that ur mystery man is none other than Loki. Admit it. Totally makes sense._

She spit-laughed, then shook her head and sighed a little bit as she typed her answer. _Wrong again. Not that I wouldn't be all over that if he wasn't a psychotic killer. Although isn't he dead now? _Vague reports of the former Earth-invader's death had been circulating ever since a giant IUD-shaped alien ship thing had appeared out of nowhere in London and Thor had saved the day awhile back, and later on Thor had been reported as confirming Loki's death in battle on some other weird planet. In fact, it had caused quite the stir, because Thor had used the words "died with honor", and Earth's inhabitants seemed to think that such a thing was impossible since they viewed Thor's brother as the very incarnation of evil.

Her phone buzzed._ Psh. He's probably in Area 51 in cahoots with all the Nazis. And you are disgusting btw. Why can't you just have a crush on one of the good guys? Captain America's hot. I'm secure enough in my masculinity to say so._

She facepalmed and suppressed the urge to scream. Every fiber within her wanted to come clean, agree that _yes_, Captain America was indeed yummy but his complicated best friend was yummier and that's who she was being secretive with, but she couldn't. For one, he would overreact and probably call the FBI for her protection and ruin everything, and secondly, she didn't know how she would even begin to explain it, or what label to use to describe exactly what Bucky was to her.

_Captain America's fine. But he's blonde. You know how I feel about that. Same goes for Thor._

In the other double bed, David began to stir, and she knew he'd be up soon. She was actually a bit relieved by the rain today. Better to save the sightseeing for later and give David time to settle in for the week, as much as he could, and staying mostly indoors was ideal for that.

_Yeah, the greasy haired psycho is so much better. My sister is a freak._

She grinned and texted back, _One word: Stuttgart. The footage with the suit and the hair and the scarf. Ignore the eye-gauging or whatever. Just saying._

A moment later: _One word: psychotherapy_.

She chuckled, putting her phone down as David got up and dragged himself to her bed before crawling up in her lap and closing his eyes. She hugged him, thinking idly about her brother and his accusations of her having the weirdest taste in men, ranging from fictional characters to malevolent aliens, and yes, it was true, to an extent. But contrary to what he liked to say, she did not like "villains", and she would not actually touch Loki with a ten foot pole. Paul just wanted her to find some normal, stable guy somewhere to fall in love with who would give her the simpler, easier life he wanted for her.

Which is why she kept her secret a secret for now. If Paul knew who she had spent the previous night dining with and dancing with and kissing, he would think her insane and be unable to look past the words _Winter Soldier_ long enough to see the truth. And the truth, blossoming forth in her mind with even more vigor following last night, was that she very much did have a crush on one of the "good guys", even if the man in question couldn't remember much of being one.

He was _good_. And no nightmare, whether his or hers, would ever convince her otherwise.

* * *

><p>"So I take it last night went well."<p>

Bucky gave a non-committal shrug, drinking his coffee and trying not to glance at the clock on the stove. "Would have been better if Natasha hadn't been tailing us."

Steve paused from across the table. "Look, I'm sorry about that. But it was for your protection, too. She told me there was some kind of prank with some punks and a gunshot, and that you handled it well."

He set down his cup and shook his head slightly, thinking back to that moment. He'd been on the cusp of a flashback, a bad one that might have left him half-catatonic for the night, but Summer had pulled him back from it before he could lose himself. "Because of her."

"I assume you don't mean Natasha."

Bucky gave him an unimpressed look, and Steve grinned.

"Give yourself some credit. That's actually pretty huge. Make sure you tell Dr. Connor tomorrow."

"I'd have to tell him about her then," Bucky pointed out. "I don't think I want to."

"He already knows about her. You've told him the story. Right?"

"Some of it."

Steve paused. "Oh. Well, then maybe now's the time to do it."

"No point. I don't want the lecture."

"I doubt you've done anything worth lecturing with her."

"If I told him I went out on a date, in public, he would flip his wig." That made Steve smile, which made Bucky narrow his eyes. "What?"

"Nothing. It's just that you're starting to sound more like yourself every day and you don't even realize it."

Bucky didn't let it show, but little things like this were enough to make his day go by a lot less painfully than they would otherwise. Every time Steve said something like that, or he recovered a memory from his early years, he would feel a little lighter and more hopeful than he had the moment before. It wouldn't last forever, but being able to believe for a little while that he really was recovering his old self, one step at a time, gave him motivation to keep going.

"She seems to like you a lot."

Bucky looked down at his drink, unable to think of anything to say to that. After last night, after several hours of watching her blush and smile and light up at his smallest, most innocent touches, he could no longer doubt it himself, but he was no closer to understanding why.

And the sounds that she had made when he kissed her had been new. Having her lying down beneath him was new too, and it had given him a lot to think about when he got home. A lot. Granted, it was one of the more pleasant things he'd lost sleep over, but the level of desire he'd experienced following just a few moments of kissing was more overwhelming than he'd bargained for.

"Bucky?"

His head snapped up, and he realized he'd been staring off blankly like he did when much worse thoughts were getting the better of him. "I'm fine."

"You sure?"

He almost laughed. "No."

"What's wrong?"

He took a breath, but before he could answer, there was a knock on the door, and if his entire demeanor changed and instantly brightened, it would probably account for the way Steve smiled at him as he got up and headed to the door. Bucky had the sudden and inexplicable urge to stick his foot out and trip him in retaliation, but he ignored it and compulsively ran a hand through his hair, then frowned a little when the loud, shiny metal of his arm caught his eye. He wanted nothing more than to throw a hoodie on over his black t-shirt and disguise his hand, but knowing that she would prefer him as he was, and the fact that her son hadn't recognized him until he saw the hand, convinced him to be uncomfortable for the day. At least part of it.

Then he heard the door open and her voice carry softly into the apartment, and he spent a moment thinking too much about if he should stay where he was or get up to greet her. He ended up just twisting around in his seat in time to see her come inside and meet his gaze, a small smile reaching her lips when she did, and he didn't notice it, but he gave her the smallest of smiles back.

Annoyance flickered across his face when he watched Steve politely take her coat from her, the same one from last night, and he decided that for the rest of the week, when she came over, he'd answer the door himself so he'd get to do that.

* * *

><p>Regardless of the rough start to her day and the nearly two hours that it took to get out of the hotel room, Summer had all but forgotten about it all by the time she was sitting in Steve Roger's living room, on the couch with Bucky next to her and the Captain himself across from them, while David flitted back and forth between the two men, unsure of who to harass the most. The oddest part of it all was how normal it felt, despite the fact that she was a nobody who was still in shock, months later, that she personally knew either of these men.<p>

Bucky stayed mostly silent, but he seemed comfortable enough next to her, occasionally looking at her and making her breath catch when he did. Steve was good at making polite conversation with her, asking her questions about her backstory that she wasn't sure he didn't already know, but either way, he was easy to talk to and it kept the situation from feeling awkward or forced.

The highlight of it all, she had to admit, was watching David hand first Bucky and then Steve a toy each, then go back and forth between playing with both of them. And unlike before, Bucky actually legitimately played with him this time, rather than just awkwardly hold the toy and stare at it until David moved on.

He caught her smiling at him a few times, and when she would look away, she could feel his eyes stay where they were. Eventually, Steve began to take notice of this.

"So," he said, cheerfully, "Bucky said you might be up for showing one of us how to make a decent homemade dinner?"

"Oh," she chuckled in mild surprise, "uh... yeah, I mean, if you wanted to take a chance on my cooking -"

"He says it's great," Steve replied, nodding at Bucky.

She glanced at the man in question, then turned to him more fully and said, "Well, all right, then. What did you like most that I made?"

He thought for a moment, then answered, "I liked your meatballs a lot."

"Yeah you did," she smiled, remembering that particular night. "You ate like fifteen of them. Or twenty, actually, I can't remember."

"Sounds great," Steve interjected. "If you tell me what you need for it I'll run to the store and get it."

"Uh... well, what do you have here?"

A few moments later, Steve was showing her around his kitchen and what food and spices and such things he had in stock, and she was surprised that he had as much as he did until she realized that she had no reason to think of him as a typical guy with no clue how to cook anything.

"All right, so, let me a make a list," she said, getting out her phone to type one out, then stopping when Steve scratched his head, then made another suggestion.

"Actually - how about you leave David here with me and you and Bucky go instead?"

She blinked, looking up from her phone and immediately launching into a refusal. "I - no, no, I can't keep asking you to watch him for me, really -"

"You haven't asked," he grinned. "I've offered." Then he glanced towards the living room, and she followed his gaze to Bucky, who was making extremely quiet wooshing sounds as he flew David's small Thor toy through the air for him. She filed it away in memories to recall if she ever wanted to smile like an idiot and melt a little. Or a lot. "The thing is," Steve continued in a more hushed tone, "I'm trying to get him out more, give him more... normalcy, I guess. And I don't want to be in the way the whole time you're here, either."

"You're not in the... oh," she trailed off, suddenly getting it. "Okay. I didn't bring much of David's things, though..."

"The store's two blocks away," Steve replied. "You won't be gone long. He'll be fine." Then he paused and asked in almost a whisper, "If anything happens while you're out, call me." He paused again and asked his next question in a tone that suggested he despised it. "Do you carry any weapons?"

Her eyes widened a bit but she replied, "I have mace and a taser in my purse. Couldn't bring my guns with me."

He nodded. "You won't need to use them. Just... pay attention to any signs that something's triggering him, and call me and try to bring him home right away if something does."

"You mean like... if he starts staring or speaking Russian or something? That's what he did before."

"Yeah, or if he seems like he suddenly doesn't recognize you anymore."

Her eyes widened a bit. "Does that happen a lot?"

He shook his head, "Only once so far. There were certain... keywords they used, ways that they programmed him. I told him one night that if he wanted, he could be an asset in the search for leftover HYDRA agents, and... it was a long night. Don't use the word 'asset' around him."

Luckily, that wasn't very high on her vocabulary. "Okay. Anything else I need to know?"

He shook his head, then replied, "Just that I'm really glad you came."

She fidgeted briefly, unsure of how to respond, ending up going with, "I really am gonna pay you back for all of this one day, I swear -"

He furrowed his brows while shaking his head, waving her off. "I wouldn't take your money if you tried to give it to me. Now go before Bucky accuses me of trying to steal you from him."

She smiled and turned, mostly expecting the suspicious side look she was getting from Bucky as she left the kitchen following her hushed conversation with Steve. Cheerfully, she walked up to where he was seated and asked, "Want to take a walk to the store?"

He looked at her, then at Steve who sat back down across from him, then back to her. "What?"

She smiled. "Walk. To a store. With me. Do you want to?"

He looked like he was about to ask why they were going instead of Steve, but then he quietly nodded and handed Thor back to David before getting up and heading to his room. He didn't look particularly happy about it, but she tried not to think much of it as she got her coat on and then waited on the couch.

When Bucky came back, in the jacket she hated with a passion with a black hat smashed over his head and his hand disguised, he came to a wordless halt and waited for her to lead the way while half-glaring at Steve. Steve only smiled cheerfully while Summer grabbed her purse and told David she would be back soon. He barely acknowledged her and kept playing.

"Okay, let's hurry up before the rain starts again," she told Bucky as he followed her to the door.

They were barely in the hallway with the door closed behind them before Bucky deadpanned, "So what was Steve whispering to you about?"

She froze for a moment, but only for a moment. She knew that he would ask, and he had every right to. He also had the right to the truth, and if she was really his friend and whatever else, the right to have her not dance around the truth when it came to these things.

"Just some pointers to make sure I don't say something stupid and make you snap and kill me while we're out."

* * *

><p>Of course, he already knew what they had discussed. The question was merely a test to see how she would answer, and he was relieved by her honesty and lack of eggshell walking. It was bad enough to be a ticking timebomb, to an extent, without being treated like one as well.<p>

She started walking ahead of him, down the stairwell in her flat shoes that didn't constrain her the way that those boots from last night did, and he followed after her. "I didn't snap last night."

"Yeah, but I guess since we don't have a babysitter this time he thought I should have a warning," she shrugged as they reached the next flight of stairs. "But I'm not worried. It's just a grocery store."

He didn't reply, falling into step beside her as they turned out on the sidewalk, under a gray sky and a chilly breeze. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she shivered a little and then shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat, then let his eyes wander down to her legs, outlined well in fitted dark jeans and holding his attention for a bit before he moved his gaze back up and settled on the hair she wore loose over her shoulders.

"You should watch where you're walking."

Snapping out of it suddenly, he met her eyes and saw a grin on her lips. He thought about looking away and reminding himself that staring generally unnerved people, but then he remembered who this was walking next to him and replied, "You should be used to it by now."

"Well, maybe from you, but trust me, nobody's ever stared at me like that before in my life," she said. "You're the first."

He thought for a moment on how to answer that, wondering why or how exactly that could be true. "I doubt that," was his final underwhelming response.

"You realize that the closest thing to male interaction that I had for five years was when the UPS guy would knock on my door or I'd get a guy cashier at Walmart?" she replied, giving him an incredulous look.

He shrugged. "Before that, then."

She fell silent then, and he looked at her cautiously. She ended up shrugging and answering, "Nothing much to talk about there, either."

This was starting to hurt his head a bit. He was not blind or otherwise impaired in ways that would make him perceive her incorrectly, so he knew that she was every bit as attractive as he saw her to be. And his habit of analyzing everything and everyone around him had identified at least six men who had looked at her with interest during their date the night before. And one more man since they'd left the apartment.

His hand itched to grab hers, to put off the attention, but he kept it in his pocket.

"I'm sure you had the opposite experience back in your day."

He narrowed his eyes and almost objected to the veiled "old man" joke, but the grin she flashed was disarming, and he merely shrugged. "I guess. I only remember bits and pieces, so it doesn't help much."

"Help with what?"

"Knowing what the hell I'm doing."

The market was within sight, and Summer replied quietly, "Well, you could have fooled me."

When her words registered with him, he turned to look at her just as she flashed him a smile and ducked into the store. He followed her inside and felt his lips curl just a little bit, especially when she reached back and grabbed his hand as she picked up a grocery basket and headed into the aisles.

Steve's ideas weren't always terrible.

* * *

><p>Shopping with Bucky was a bit similar to shopping with David, in that both of them apparently liked to touch things and stare at different items for too long and end up making her almost leave them behind on accident. She found herself leading Bucky by his hand, finding him rather cute as he took everything in and asked her questions about things like what exactly gluten was and why labels would possibly want to brag about something not having sugar.<p>

"Why hasn't Steve taken you to a grocery store before?" she asked, though not complaining about being his guide on his first trip to one. She'd grabbed almost everything she needed and had the basket balanced on her arm after shaking her head at his offer to hold it for her.

Bucky shrugged. "I think he orders food in bulk or something."

That, she could understand. "Does it get old eating that much? Seems kind of exhausting."

"Sometimes."

"I mean, I remember being pregnant and hungry all the time, and it was the worst. I gained like fifty-five pounds and looked like I was smuggling hobbits in barrels under my shirt." Then she looked back at the confused look on his face and sighed. "I was gigantic is what I mean."

He didn't have much to say to that, and no wonder, she thought to herself, because what kind of freak follows up a hot date with tales of pregnancy weight gain while grocery shopping? May as well describe the joy of labor and C-sections and really get him in the mood to whisper more French in her ear. Yes, she was totally on the right track.

"Where?"

Snapping out of her self-ridicule, she looked up to find him walking at her side now, a hint of last night's playfulness in his eye, and she asked, "What?"

At her confusion, he looked away and shrugged. "Never mind."

Grabbing several giant cans of tomato sauce from a shelf, she furrowed her brows and tried to remember the very last thing she'd said, and it took her way too long to remember that it had been _I was gigantic_. And then it made sense.

_Poor guy_, she thought while hiding a smile, hearing her talk about barrels under her shirt and being gigantic and immediately going _there_, and she couldn't blame him. On the bright side, maybe she hadn't totally ruined the atmosphere with the brief pregnancy talk. Now if she could just catch on to these things when they were being said and not five minutes later, maybe she could keep up.

She sighed as they headed to the checkout lanes, knowing it was bad when one began to have trouble keeping up with a guy who was in his mid-nineties and had only a fraction of his memories in his possession. Maybe it was time to step up her game a bit.

Whatever that meant.

* * *

><p>It was like being back at her home again, at the same time not. The familiar scent of her food cooking coupled with the child currently stuck to his side brought him a comforting sense of familiarity, even if he wasn't used to the boy being quite so attached to him and it was a little bit strange.<p>

At the moment, David was using his arm as a platform for a battle between Iron Man and a villain he didn't recognize, some guy in a purple suit and green hair, and oddly enough, Bucky didn't mind. The kid was fearless.

What he was starting to mind was the pleasant conversation coming from the kitchen, and the sight of Steve helping Summer cook and doing all of her chopping and mincing for her. Were these the kind of things that he was supposed to offer to do? Probably not, because as good as he was with a knife, he'd be helpless if he was supposed to put one to a vegetable. Maybe this was what he was doomed to spend the week doing, sitting quietly while acting as a human sized toy while Steve got all the good conversation and interaction.

Iron Man was losing to the green-haired bad guy, laying on his back on Bucky's forearm while the bad guy started creeping closer. Glancing at David's very concentrated expression, Bucky then started shifting the plates in his arms around, and the motion knocked the bad guy off his arms and to the couch cushions. David gaped and then beamed, clearly finding the arm to be the coolest thing ever. Then he made Bucky do it again, and again.

Eventually, Steve's phone rang and he retreated to his room to take the call. Around the same time, something on TV distracted David long enough for Bucky to slip away from the couch and wander into the kitchen.

As usual, Summer didn't notice him, because his footsteps were as silent as ever. The kitchen was small, just big enough for the basics with a very small island providing extra counterspace, and there was not a lot of room where she was, between the island and the stove. He glanced at the island, then at her, and picked up a spoon on the counter and let it clatter back down in the hopes of not scaring her with his sudden presence.

She jumped anyway, then blushed a little and smiled when she turned and saw him standing not far away from her. "Geez, you scared me. It's almost done."

She was stirring a pot and her hair was thrown up in the same clip as the night before, and he was about to step closer and do... something, though he wasn't sure yet, when she suddenly whipped around with a spoon in her hand and a smile on her face.

"Can you taste and tell me if it's a good as what you remember?"

He looked at the spoon, then her, and leaned down to take the offered taste. After, he looked back up at her to find her bottom lip between her teeth, and the sudden urge to grab her and bite it for her made him forget what he was about to say.

"Good?" she asked quietly, maybe even slightly timidly. He nodded, only half-comprehending her question, then felt suddenly bereft when she turned back around and went back to stirring. Was that much stirring even necessary?

A quick glance around found David still occupied and Steve nowhere in sight. With little thought as to whether it was good timing or not, he took the last remaining step between them, leaving less than an inch of space between her back and his chest, and though she stiffened and started stirring with renewed vigor, he knew it wasn't because his proximity was unwanted.

He would always prefer her hair down, but up like this, it gave him a clear view of her lovely neck and a few very light, barely-there freckles that were just beneath her ear. He counted them, then before he could think twice about it, slowly leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to them.

She dropped the wooden spoon she'd been stirring with immediately, and when he kissed her again, trailing down slightly, she breathlessly mumbled, "You're... I'm gonna... gonna burn... something..."

Rather than pull away, he slipped his hand on her waist and drew her gently against him as his kisses gained zeal, neither of them noticing how Steve reemerged from the hallway, took one look into the kitchen, and then slowly backed away, going back the way he came.

* * *

><p>She couldn't breathe or think like this, let alone cook. Did he do these things on purpose?<p>

After she dropped the spoon, feeling like he was sucking all the air from her lungs just by lightly kissing along her neck, she leaned back into him and looked into the living room, her single coherent thought being that she still didn't necessarily want David to see any of this. But David was oblivious, and her gaze was torn away by a hand on her jaw guiding her head to the side, while his other one still held her close by her waist.

Heart thudding, she looked up into intense blue eyes and then down at lips that were so close to her own, almost brushing them, and shivered when he reached behind her head and slid his fingertips into her hair before pulling her closer as her eyes fell shut.

Then the oven timer beeped noisily, she jumped with an embarrassing squeak, and Bucky reluctantly moved away to let her get herself together enough to turn off the timer and get the meatballs out of the oven. Her nerves were suddenly on edge and she momentarily forgot what the next step of the cooking process was as she glanced behind her. He merely leaned against the island, watching her with mild amusement, and she wondered if he had any idea what he did to her brain with so little effort.

As she turned back to the food, trying to remember what she was supposed to do next, Steve reappeared in the hallway, cautiously peered towards the kitchen, then walked out nonchalantly when he saw that the coast was clear this time.

Bucky eventually had a modicum of mercy and left her to finish up dinner without having to feel his eyes on her the entire time, and by the time everybody was seated and eating, Summer could almost cry for how distracted she still was from a couple of soft, unexpected kisses that he had clearly meant to scramble her brain with.

To her relief, the food turned out exactly as it always did, which was very well, and there was something particularly satisfying in having Captain America praise your cooking. Someday, when she could speak of these things, she would point out to Paul the fact that the world's first superhero liked her food even if he liked to nitpick at it and doubt that it was edible.

After everybody was full, Steve got a text that had him up and out of the apartment at impressive speed after giving the appropriate apologies, and still seated at table, Summer looked to Bucky questioningly after the front door closed behind the super soldier. He shrugged. "He does that."

"... Super secret business or...?"

He shrugged again. "Doesn't really tell me. Probably Natasha though."

"Oh." Well, then. The likelihood of Steve still being a "95 year old virgin" kept dwindling more each day she spent in New York.

In any case, now Summer felt the burden of figuring out what to do with the rest of the night fall to her by default. She only had so many options.

"So, movie?" When he only shrugged at that suggestion, she asked, "Did you ever get around to finishing Star Wars?"

"Not yet."

"We could try to finish it now," she suggested.

"I didn't mind not finishing it."

She smiled a little, thinking back to that particular night in Virginia, and then glanced over to David, who had finished eating quickly and was now wrapped up in his tablet on the couch. "Well, just so you know, my rule still applies. About when David's watching."

"Sorry."

He didn't look particularly sorry. If anything, he looked rather happy with himself. "I saw him playing with your arm earlier. I hope that was okay."

He shrugged, but his expression became a bit more serious. "It was fine."

She smiled warmly, then got up and motioned for him to do the same. "All right, come on. I'll get you into Star Wars if it's the last thing I do."

* * *

><p>A few hours later, Summer couldn't believe it. She was sitting on the couch, with David's head in her lap as he had fallen asleep way before his bedtime, and on her other side, Bucky was also asleep. Of all the ways she expected the night to go, this was not one of them. And she was fairly sure that Bucky was never going to finish the movie.<p>

Credits rolling on the TV, she gently pried David from her lap and stood up, then peered at Bucky's sleeping form. He was sitting up, arms crossed, head straight back against the couch, and the only part of him that looked remotely relaxed was his face. Still, there was nothing peaceful about the slumber, that much she could tell, and she was a little taken aback that he felt secure enough around her to just doze off like that. Then again, he probably hadn't meant to.

She called his name softly a few times, but he didn't budge. After spending one too many minutes marveling at how long his dark lashes looked against his skin, she decided to leave him be. She couldn't imagine that he slept much better these days than he had before.

Suddenly alone for all intents and purposes, she wandered off to the bathroom, wondering how long David could sleep without completely ruining his bedtime later. On her way out, she chuckled at the array of hair products that littered the counter. But, for two frozen old men, they did have some good hair, so it wasn't surprising.

Then she wandered back into the hallway, and an open door to a bedroom in front of it caught her interest. Later she would wonder what had possibly possessed her to go peek into it, given that she had no idea who the room belonged to and that even if she did it was still rude, but she poked her head inside anyway.

She flipped the light on for a better look, curiosity getting the better of her, and she knew right away that she'd picked the right room. The mostly barren state of it and the stacks upon stacks of books next to the bed, plus the rather abused-looking sheets, were clear giveaways that it was Bucky's room. She would have turned off the light and walked away had she not spotted the book he'd left her home with on the table next to his bed.

One peek wouldn't hurt, right? After all, she had given up her own bedroom to him for a month, so one look around his wasn't that big of a deal.

crept towards his bed, and when the book was within reach, she opened it and skimmed through it, smiling when she found her lock of hair still within the pages. She wondered why he had it on a piece of furniture rather than with the vast stacks of other books as she closed it, placing back where it had been and intending to turn and leave the room. But, when she cast one more glance at the books on the floor, the corner of what appeared to be a folder caught her eye from near her foot. It was half-shoved under his bed with its contents partially spilling out, like it had been thrown there, and upon closer inspection, had Russian writing on the cover.

It would have been a good time to leave and forget she'd seen anything, but after a cautious glance to the open door, she knelt down and slid the folder out from under the bed.

If it was what she thought it might be, she didn't really want to see what was inside. She had quickly given up trying to research more of his history and deeds from within HYDRA after learning the basics from the Internet leaks during his first week in her home, because it was his story to tell her if he wanted and it wasn't fair to him to learn it a different way. It was enough to know that he had been controlled and brainwashed into murdering HYDRA's enemies. She didn't need to hear any more details unless he felt the need to confide them to her, if that day ever came.

So why did she look? She instantly wished that she hadn't. One turn of the cover later, and she was staring a picture of him on ice. A smaller picture of him from the 40's, in his Army uniform, was paperclipped to the bottom of the page, and her eyes flitted between the two before settling on the larger one, the one that she knew she never should have looked at, because she would never forget it and she already wished that she could.

It didn't make her feel pity for him. It pissed her off.

She closed the folder, returning it to its previous position, her chest tight as she tried to shake the image off. Then she stood up, turned around, and froze at the sight of Bucky leaning against the doorframe, watching her with a mix of caution and curiosity.

_Well, crap._

"I'm sorry," she instantly said, feeling her cheeks heat up with embarrassment and guilt. He didn't look particularly angry, but now she felt like a big fat rude jerk. "I just... I don't even know what I was thinking, honestly, I just... I don't know. I'm sorry."

He responded to her elegant-as-ever speech by holding up his hand briefly, silencing her as he walked inside the room. She fretted as she stood there, not knowing what to do with herself, still feeling terrible and absolutely stupid. All she got out of the deal was a visual that she never wanted to see, but what else had she expected from a Russian file that was half under his bed?

"If you wanted to see my room, you could have just asked," he said finally, standing near his dresser, glancing at her with an expression that was still free of any anger.

"Yeah, well, I'm an idiot, so," she shrugged. "I should probably go before I do something else stupid."

She took a few steps, but a question from him gave her pause. "Like what?"

"...I don't know, but I'm sure I could manage something."

She didn't really want to leave, however, so she remained where she was, fidgeting with her hands, until he spoke again. "I can't read that file. I've tried and I can't."

She knew he didn't mean that he literally couldn't, since he spoke the language. "Maybe you shouldn't." When he looked at her questioningly, she blinked and added, "I mean, don't listen to me. I don't know anything. But reliving things... sucks." Her mind flashed to her dream from that morning, then quickly shoved it away.

He stayed silent, and she took the opportunity to take a good look at him. He really did look exhausted, but she supposed that she hadn't really registered it because she had never seen him not look exhausted. Maybe it was clearer now after seeing the old picture of him in uniform, from a time when sleep had surely not been so much of an issue.

"How are you sleeping?" she asked softly.

He scoffed dismissively. "I'm not."

"I figured. That's why I didn't try to wake you. Although at this rate, you're never gonna finish that movie," she joked, trying to lighten the conversation. He appreciated it, but he didn't quite smile back.

At this point, before, she might have given him a reassuring touch or even a hug, but now everything seemed trickier. Also, she was in his room, and they were as close to alone as they were going to get tonight.

Eventually, something shiny on top of his dresser caught her eye. Based on the shape of it, it could really be only one thing, but how in the world did he have it? "Are those..."

He followed her gaze to his dog tags, then picked them up and looked at them before handing them to her. "Yeah. Steve stole them from the Smithsonian."

She took them carefully, reading his name and information on the silver tag. It really was something that these things had survived all those years somehow, a relic from better days that she wished she could have known him in. Then his words slowly registered in her head. When they did, she looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. "He stole something?"

"He said he was returning them to their owner," he shrugged. "Didn't want to admit that he stole something."

She smiled at his remark and then handed the dog tags back to him, but instead of opening his palm to take them, he gently took her wrist in his grip and pulled her closer, which made her stomach flip. He raised his other hand, the left one, and opened it, so she dropped the chain into it, and he didn't let go of her wrist as he placed it back on the dresser.

She felt the urge to start babbling take over when his hand left her wrist to reach to her face, moving a piece of hair behind her ear. "I still really want to know what you said in French yesterday."

He smiled his maddening little half-smile and glanced down at the floor - or was that her shoes? - before replying, "It still applies today."

"What's that mean?" she asked just as he tried to pull her in for a kiss, but she managed to resist - barely. "No. Nope. I won't kiss you until you tell me what you said."

He narrowed his eyes in a way that told her that he didn't believe her, then leaned in only to end up kissing her cheek. He pulled back and looked at her with a mix of amusement and irritation. She tried not to smile and held her head up. "I mean it. Not until you tell me."

He replied by taking her waist in both hands and turning her, pushing her against the dresser and taking her by surprise. He held her there and then brushed her hair aside before pressing a kiss to the side of her neck, and she couldn't help but whine a little. "That's cheating!"

Cheating or not, she didn't stop him, and instead grasped his hair and shoulder while trying not to moan like some floozy as he took his time kissing everywhere that he could, from the top of her neck to the bottom, over her collarbone and across the few inches of her chest that her shirt didn't cover, then back up and to the other side of her neck, to her ear and then across her jaw, and finally, the corner of her mouth. She was panting by the time he got there, and having felt a few flicks of his tongue a couple of times along the way, she opened her eyes and breathlessly muttered, "You're such a liar." When he stared at her in slight confusion, she explained, "Saying you don't know what you're doing."

The half-smile made a brief reappearance, and then he leaned in to kiss her, but she still resisted, pulling back before his lips could touch hers. He huffed in frustration, and she smiled, proud that she hadn't given in yet. "Tell me what you said first."

"No," he replied, staring down at her lips and breathing hard himself.

"Why?" she half-whined, getting to the point of desperation in wanting to know what he said. He didn't answer, trailing kisses back across her jaw to her ear, and when she felt the gentle nip of his teeth and her resulting shudder, she knew she wouldn't hold out for much longer. "Can I at least have a hint?"

Returning back to her lips, he licked his own and then appeared to think for a moment before replying, "You'll blush even more than you are right now when I tell you someday."

Someday? She was about to start whining again, but then he claimed her lips in a kiss that swallowed her words and her breath whole and then, if that wasn't enough, he utterly knocked her off of her own personal axis by unexpectedly lifting her up on top of the dresser and eliminating the very concept of space between them.

She smiled against his lips, having always wanted to be picked up and ravaged on top of something, and now she could finally say that she had been.

* * *

><p>He knew that she didn't know what she was doing to him, that she couldn't have a clue how every whine and soft, almost imperceptible moan that left her throat hit him in places that were alive and well again and driving his every move. She was wrong about him being a liar, though, because whatever he was doing, it wasn't a result of thinking but of feeling, and that was what made it so uniquely freeing.<p>

If having her underneath him the night before had been a revelation, then having her pressed against him with her legs around his hips was a life-changing epiphany. Nothing was satisfying, and nothing filled the growing ache from within, but instead, every kiss and every touch and every sound out of her mouth only drove him to want more. And, it was apparent that something had unlocked within her as well, because her hands were more exploratory than they'd ever been before, and the sensation of her squeezing her legs around him and grinding against him shorted out whatever parts of his brain had still been functioning until that point.

He was barely aware of his own movements as he picked her up again and this time carried her to his bed, where he dropped her and immediately and climbed atop her, barely giving her the chance to breathe before he resumed kissing her into oblivion. Her hands drew up the hem of his shirt but he wasn't thinking clearly enough to discard it, focusing instead on his right hand as it ran down her side, then along her stomach, slipping gently up her shirt, making her tremble slightly as she broke away for desperately needed air.

"Bucky," he heard her call barely above a whisper, and though he looked down at her, he didn't decipher the slight uncertainty starting to grow on her face. Instead, he kissed her again, and he let his left hand brush some of her hair from her face as he did.

She shivered a bit from the coldness of the hand, and he only let it linger for a moment before he began to draw it away, but he made the mistake of looking down at it, and that was enough to drastically alter the course of the night.

His metal thumb had just barely grazed the side of her neck, and when he saw it happen, his brain flickered similarly to the hologram he disguised his hand with in public. His movements stopped, his eyes lost focus, and he was no longer watching himself touch a woman that he had grown to care for. Instead, he was watching himself crush the throat of a very different woman.

The flashback had no context, and the woman had no identity beyond that of a mere target. The length of the memory was short, only long enough to contain the scream and gurgles of the woman as he killed her with just his hand, and the look of horror in her eyes as the life had left them.

His head split with pain, a fog descended, and he lost track of what was real and what was not. Everything blurred together, and for a few moments, he simply was not there.

The next thing he knew, he was crouched at the foot of the bed, blinking as he suddenly came back to reality, gasping for air as if he'd just broke water's surface, and Summer was in front of him, though at a safe distance, watching him with slightly fearful and very concerned expression.

He stared at her without seeing her. His mind was trying to bridge the giant gaps between the throes of passion, the flashback, and where he was now, but the pieces were all jagged and ill-fitting, like parts of them were missing and preventing him from comprehending what had just happened. He couldn't remember leaving her, getting off of her, and curling up the way that he currently was, and one horrible thought managed to break through the haze and lingering head pain enough for him to focus on Summer and get a string of words out.

"Did I hurt you?"

His own voice sounded small and pathetic to his own ears. To his relief, she shook her head. "No, you didn't, not at all. One minute you were... fine, and the next you were just staring and then you got away from me so fast I thought I'd done something wrong."

At least he hadn't lost himself to the point of reliving the flashback and hurting her, or killing her, in the process, but he still could not breathe evenly and the fire that had been coursing through his veins only moments ago had been replaced with pure, unyielding ice. She was fine this time, but maybe next time she wouldn't be. And she would be so terribly easy to kill and defenseless if this scenario ever repeated itself.

"You should go," he muttered.

"But... I'm fine, I just... is there anything I can do to help?"

He shook his head, wishing she would just leave so he could stew in disappointment and self-loathing in solitude.

He stared at the floor as she got up, and he didn't look up when she spoke again. "That was a little too much for me too, just so you know. Which wasn't your fault. It's a long story. But... I don't know, I guess we should cool it a little bit."

Then her face entered his line of vision, and he controlled the urge to shove her away by refusing to meet her eyes instead. "Hey. It's okay. I'm okay."

It took her longer to leave since he refused to acknowledge her, but eventually she left his room, leaving him to sit and not move as he stared ahead and let the encroaching shadows of his mind take him over, knowing he could only fight it off for so long anyway.

* * *

><p>After texting Steve almost immediately, Summer sat in the living room and resolved not to go until Steve was back. Bucky being alone in the apartment wasn't an option. She just wished that she'd had the brainpower to slam on the brakes a bit when it was obvious that Bucky was losing himself to the point of danger in the midst of his... fervor. Better yet, she should have made him slow down after he'd tossed her on his bed, because she owed it to both of them to be honest about what she was and wasn't ready for.<p>

He just had an ability to scramble her brain and leave her to think of these things a little too late. She wasn't used to this. At all.

So she waited, sitting uneasily on the couch, blaming herself for the whole thing and, despite her best efforts, thinking back to the dream that she had started the day with.

In her opinion, If anything, tonight only proved that the dream really was as stupid as she had originally thought. The fear in his eyes when he'd asked if he had hurt her was enough to break her heart. But he hadn't hurt her. He had jumped off of her long before he could have. And even if he had, she would have forgiven him, because certain realities came with caring for a damaged, tortured ex-POW with severe PTSD, and in the end, despite all of the other horrors, that was what he was.

She would just have to learn better ways of helping him, and for now, save the clothes-ripping and ravaging for later, when they were both better able to handle it. Until then, maybe it was best to simply do all that she could to help him avoid sinking into that familiar despair that she knew he was deep within inside of his room.

**A/N #2: I just noticed how this chapter is an angst sandwich with fluff in the middle. Sort of. ANYWAY. THANK YOU to all of you wonderful reviewers, followers, & readers for reading the story that set this one up and continuing along to this one :D I love you all and I am super grateful for the response to the first chapter. As always, let me know what you all think, and I'll see you next week! :D**


	3. Chapter 3

He was tired. He was angry. He wanted to be alone with his frustration, not sitting in front of an old grandpa of a doctor in the back of a closed butcher shop. But, that was what he did twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9 AM, because somehow doing this was supposed to help him "get better".

After initially resisting and refusing to speak at all during the sessions, eventually Bucky had begun to actually participate and allow the doctor to do his job. The man had treated others who had suffered somewhat similar situations as he, or at least that's what Steve told him, and though Bucky was highly wary at first, Steve vouched for the doctor's trustworthiness.

But today, he wanted nothing to do with any of it.

"You seem a bit more on edge today than usual," Dr. Connor observed from behind the old desk that separated them. He was in his 70's and had half a head of thin white hair, and kind, wrinkled brown eyes that made it hard to believe that he had been in SHIELD's service for nearly five decades. "Would you like to share what's on your mind?"

He shook his head, though only barely, not wanting to even give that much effort.

"Well, that makes my job a bit hard to do." The doctor paused, then asked, "Have you recalled any new memories since our last session?"

He ignored the question, staring at the desk like it was the center of his very existence.

"Something has clearly taken place since last Friday. I cannot help you sort it if you don't tell me, Sergeant."

"Don't call me that," he snapped, instantly wincing for breaking his silence.

"Forgive me," Dr. Connor nodded. "Mr. Barnes. If you would like, I'll give you as much time as you need to decide if you would like to talk or not. If you do not, that's fine. We'll pick back up on Friday."

It was almost annoying how accommodating the doctor was. It was strange and went against every memory that Bucky had of doctors. He remembered men and occasionally women in white coats poking and prodding him and wrestling him into submission, not speaking softly and smiling and never pushing him into anything he didn't want to do. Sometimes he wondered if the old man was actually a doctor or just someone Steve was paying to be nice to him.

He sat in silence for ten more minutes before he eventually caved and opened his mouth, prepared to receive a scolding that would probably send him marching out of the makeshift office in a rage never to return again.

"The girl that I lived with is here. She's visiting."

The doctor's eyebrows rose and he gave a small, friendly smile. "Oh! That is good to hear. And how is the visit coming along?"

"It was going fine."

"Was? Did something happen?"

He sighed lightly and decided to just come out with the full story for the first time. Might as well, because the sooner he got the doctor's reaction, the sooner he could decide to storm out or not, depending on his reaction. "When I lived with her, there was a couple times that... things happened."

"Okay. What sort of things?"

There was only a brief pause before he answered, "I kissed her a few times." Technically she had kissed him first, and had initiated plenty of the others, but it seemed somehow more proper to ascribe the responsibility to himself.

The doctor nodded neutrally. "I see."

"And I took her on a date Monday."

"A date. All right. And how did that go?"

He had expected a long, heavy sigh or a tone of disappointment, followed by the aforementioned scolding, but the doctor seemed to take this in stride. How odd. "Great."

"Okay. Then that can't be what has you on edge."

His jaw tightened. He hadn't planned on getting this far into the story before leaving. "She... I had a flashback while we were..." He trailed off, slightly unsure of how to describe exactly what their current state had been. The whole thing was a bit fuzzy, which made him angry on a whole other level.

"Intimate?" the doctor guessed, still no trace of judgment in his tone.

"No." He paused. Although what did that mean exactly? "I don't know. She was... we were in my bed but we weren't..."

Dr. Connor nodded. "I understand. Tell me about the flashback."

His expression darkened. "I touched her neck and it made me remember some woman. I don't know who she was. I was crushing her throat and watching her die."

"I see. Did you lash out during this flashback? Did you harm her or yourself?"

He shook his head. "I don't remember it but she said I got away from her before anything could happen."

"That is good. What happened next?"

"I told her to leave. Slept for maybe a hour before I came here."

The doctor nodded, folding his hands on the desk and leaning forward as he said, "We need to address your sleep later, but first, I want to point out to you the positive side of what happened. You were in a vulnerable position, had a very violent flashback, and your instincts kept you from harming her or yourself. This is very good."

Bucky scoffed; he couldn't help it. He crossed his arms and shook his head. "You don't get it."

"Then explain it to me."

"For once I..." he paused for a moment, unsure of how to word his thoughts. "I felt... a lot. I'm feeling a lot. But it doesn't matter because even when I'm not thinking, the flashbacks still happen, and I can't get away from it. And I'm gonna hurt her. I know I will."

"And what exactly are you feeling?"

Bucky was slightly annoyed by the question, but he answered anyway. "Like I'm actually alive."

"Lust?"

The word seemed too cheap somehow, but he shrugged. The doctor then went on, "I imagine that this is a very significant development for you. But this is as much a part of your recovery as learning to eat and drink again was. You are a human being, you're a man - you are no longer being drugged and trained in ways that take that away. So this is very healthy and positive. It will probably be overwhelming for awhile, until you get used to having these feelings again."

Bucky stared in slight disbelief. Positive?

"Now, let me ask you a few questions. First of all, do you care for the girl?"

He nodded without hesitation. Caring was a simple thing. The word didn't spark panic or a fit.

"Good. And she is aware fully of your history?"

He hesitated. What exactly did she know? "Not all the details." Even Steve didn't know those. Bucky himself didn't either.

"But she knows about HYDRA, the brainwashing, etcetera?" Bucky nodded. "Good, good. Now I can tell by the look on your face that you expected me to disapprove of this relationship, but I want to remind you that I am not here to judge or dictate your choices. Your life is your own and your decisions are your own. My job is only to help you put the pieces back together and give you the tools you need to fully reclaim your life. My advice is just that: advice. You can choose to listen or to ignore it. And I won't think any less of you or treat you different either way."

Though it was not the first time that Bucky had heard the man say such things, it was still a strange concept to comprehend. When he had left Summer's home to live with Steve, he had assumed that he would be surrounded by people trying to control him for "his own good" and that it would be a constant struggle, but instead, everyone seemed to want him to make his own choices. Natasha was one possible exception, but she was irrelevant as far as he was concerned.

"Now, as far as this relationship, how would you describe it currently?"

At this, he drew a very large blank. "Uh..."

"Do you plan to date her more?"

His expression worsened again and he muttered, "I don't know. She's only here for a week. And I..."

"Yes?"

"I don't want to hurt her," he said through slightly gritted teeth.

"Well, that is a concern," Dr. Connor agreed, "but I don't think it needs to be an obstacle. And as far as the distance, perhaps that is best for now. It's easier to take things very slowly when there is no choice but to do so."

"I'll hurt her eventually. I've hurt Steve."

"You've hurt Steve when he has woken you from nightmares and when you were dissociated," the doctor pointed out. "If the two of you use certain precautionary measures, I could reasonably believe that she would be safe. But, I also have to tell you that, in my opinion, physical intimacy should wait at least until you've finally accepted that arm of yours."

Bucky furrowed his brows and stared at the doctor. "What?"

"Until you accept that the prosthesis is as much a part of you as your other arm, you will not have the sort of control over it or your actions for that to be safe, I believe."

As he was fairly sure that he would go to his eventual grave still despising the arm and hating everything it represented, he assumed that taking this particular piece of advice would mean also going to his grave celibate, which wasn't a very attractive option given the fact that it had taken him seven decades to get his desires back in the first place.

"And the flashbacks are a concern as well. Steve is durable and can handle you when you're not in your right mind, but I can safely assume that this woman cannot. And your flashbacks are very unpredictable and erratic in their triggering."

That much was obvious. Maybe it was hopeless, doomed from the start, and all because of him.

"Don't mistake my meaning," the doctor added. "These are concerns, but I think that this relationship could be good for you, so long as you both approach it realistically and slowly. And cautiously. I cannot emphasize this enough."

_Caution_. He hadn't used a lot of that when he'd thrown Summer on his bed the night before.

"What you both need to know and always keep in mind is that a relationship will not be easy, and you have a long recovery ahead of you. This is only the beginning. She needs to know what she's getting into, and you need to be as patient as you can and accept that setbacks will happen. They will - the trick is to learn from them and not let them derail the process you make."

The doctor made sense, to Bucky's slight chagrin. The problem was, he had a hard time believing that, distance or not, Summer would stick around for any significant period of time when he was such a mess. She might like him now, for some reason, but if he couldn't accept himself, how could she ever be content with him? There was a world full of men out there that she could pick from instead, and surely, in time, she would. A part of him still thought it absurd to even be thinking about any of this in a serious way.

"What do you think?"

Bucky frowned at this question, eventually answering, "I don't know."

"Well, there's no rush. Take your time and talk to her, have an honest conversation about the realities you'll both face. Then tell me about it on Friday."

Dr. Connor then smiled, and Bucky merely sighed and looked away. If he'd just had a shred of self-control the night before...

"Now, let's talk about your sleep."

His jaw tightened again. This conversation would be even less pleasant than the last one.

* * *

><p>If being stared down and mentally undressed by Bucky made her squirm uncontrollably, then being analyzed and observed by Natasha made Summer want to hide behind Steve's couch with David. At least he had the good sense to be avoiding the woman at all costs.<p>

It was moments like these that made her doubt her sudden place in this world of Avengers and spies and women with red hair who were shorter than her but still managed to scare the ever-living crap out of her. But she did her best to not let it show, sipping coffee while trying to pretend that the woman didn't exist, which was hard to do when she was sitting directly across from her at a rather small table.

Steve clearing his throat to her left thankfully gave her something else to focus on, looking up at him as he stood by the table with his hands on his hips. "It's been an hour, so I'm gonna go pick him up now."

Her eyes widened fractionally, silently begging him not to leave her with Natasha. It wasn't that she actually feared for her safety, but she did have her limits when it came to the levels of intimidation that she could handle for prolonged periods of time.

Steve paused for a moment, then glanced at Natasha and began, "Do you want to come with me or -"

"No, I'm good here. I don't get many chances for girl talk," she shrugged, and internally, Summer wanted to sink to the floor and disappear.

"... Okay," Steve replied, giving Summer a quick look that said _I tried_, and she smiled weakly in response. He really was ridiculously nice. "Be back in twenty or so."

And then, in a moment, he was gone, and it was back to trying to appear nonchalant as Natasha leaned back in her chair and resumed her casual staring. Summer wasn't sure that she could take twenty minutes of this.

"So," Natasha finally spoke. "I hear that - ow!"

A tiny plastic Loki action figure struck an inch away from Natasha's left eye, and both women's eyes snapped towards the living room to see David leap behind the couch.

"Sorry," Summer half-smiled, leaving her seat briefly to grab the toy. Then she looked at the couch and called out, "David! No throwing! Especially no throwing things at people!"

She glanced back at Natasha to find her unscathed, of course, but a little bit annoyed, and Summer was having a hard time not laughing. "He's not really used to being around other people," she shrugged.

"I'll survive," Natasha replied dismissively. "Which is more than I can say for you."

And there it was. Summer sighed, gathering up her courage and replying, "Look, I can tell by now that you don't like me, but..."

"It's not that I don't like you," Natasha shrugged. "Barnes thinks I hate him too, but I don't. Though I have reason to. It's not as simple as that."

Summer swallowed and looked around the room. "Um..."

"Most of us had no choice but to be a part of all of this. Some of us got thrust in out of nowhere, some of us - like Barnes - were forced, and some of us have been doing this since we were kids and don't know anything else," Natasha said, impressively emotionless as she said this. "All of us have been through enough in the last five years to want nothing more but go disappear on an island somewhere and not come back for a very long time. I'm sure that to you, there's a sense of intrigue and maybe even glamour -"

"Are you kidding me?" Summer interrupted, shocked with herself that she actually spoke but unable to let that one slip by. "There is nothing glamorous about a half-dead guy with a robot arm puking on your kitchen floor and screaming all night every night for a month. This has all been super weird since the day I met him but there's never been one time that I thought it was cool or 'glamorous'."

"So it's pity, then," Natasha surmised.

"No," Summer shook her head. "He would probably throw me out a window if I ever acted like I pitied him."

Natasha paused, then switched tactics. "How much do you know of his past?"

Summer paused, wishing for a way out of the conversation, afraid of where it was headed. "I read some of his files before they were pulled from the Internet. I know enough."

"And you feel safe bringing your five year old boy around him as if he was just an average guy off the street?"

"He saved our lives in Virginia," Summer replied, about to get genuinely pissed off.

"And who put them in danger?" Natasha half-smiled. Summer scowled, but she went on. "It won't be an isolated incident. He wants to help us go after HYDRA. He's not going to get an office job somewhere and live a normal life. His normal is nothing like yours. His normal is hunting and fighting and death."

"I know," Summer muttered irritably.

"Then why are you here?" Natasha asked bluntly.

To her frustration, Summer found herself at a loss for words. And it was a bad moment to draw a blank.

She looked up at Natasha, who looked far too satisfied with herself. Summer felt like all of her uncertainties and foolishness had just been yanked out of her and put on display for all the world to see. And instead of making her want to crawl under the table and hide, it was making her angry.

"I'm here because I care," she answered honestly. "I fed him and clothed him and took care of him for a month, and I know how hard it is for him to just get through the day."

"And you think you can help him?"

"No," Summer answered somewhat honestly. "Maybe. I don't know. But I really don't see why I need to defend myself to you."

"You don't," Natasha shrugged.

"Then why are you asking me all of this?" Summer asked a little desperately.

"Because I don't have the same blinders on that Steve does," Natasha replied. "He can't help it. He looks at Barnes and sees a sick best friend who needs his help. I, on the other hand, see the man who managed to shoot me twice and almost killed two people who are important to me."

"That's all you see?" Summer asked, shuddering a little at the thing about being shot twice. No wonder they didn't seem to get along.

"No. I happen to have a very good personal understanding of what HYDRA did to him. And Steve's not the only one who's had to fight a brainwashed friend. I'm actually very sympathetic to what Barnes has been through. But I also happen to be a realist."

Summer sighed and glanced behind her, checking on David, who was still hiding behind the couch and currently planning another toy launch attack. She turned back to the other woman and replied, "I'm not an idiot."

"I never said you were. But you have the choice to either live a normal life outside of this chaos or dive head first into it. And once you dive in, there's no getting out. I can guarantee you that."

Suddenly feeling as if the conversation had far surpassed what her actual reality was, Summer replied, "I'm only here for a week. I don't think that really qualifies as 'diving in'."

"And if Steve asks you to move here?"

Summer's eyes widened. "What?"

"Hypothetically," Natasha clarified. "Let's say he got you a job up here and asked you to move here for the sake of his friend. Would you say no?"

"I... I don't know," Summer half-stuttered. "David's... I don't think I could do that because of him. And I don't think Steve would ask me to do that."

Natasha smiled slightly and replied, "You don't know him very well yet. Steve would do anything for him. And if he thinks that keeping you around helps him, he'll figure out a way to make you say yes."

Summer couldn't think about that. Just the very concept made her head spin.

"My point is," Natasha said after a moment, "you have a choice, which is something that most of us never get. Don't take it lightly."

Summer didn't respond, looking across the table to the other woman with lingering irritation that was fading under the truth of what she was saying. But, she was quick to remind herself that she was not moving to New York, that this was only a visit, and Natasha had to be greatly overestimating her role in Bucky's life. But that thought wasn't as comforting as it should have been.

Then a toy helicarrier flew through the air and would have hit Natasha's forehead if she hadn't caught it first, and Summer whipped around in her chair. "David! Stop it! One more time and I'll take you back to the hotel and you won't get any time with Captain America today!"

After ascribing that sentence to her mental list of things she never thought she would say, she turned back around to find Natasha holding the helicarrier and examining it with a critical eye. "Very inaccurate. Not as bad as the Loki one, though."

After a moment or two, Summer plucked up the nerve to ask a question. "What would you do? If you were me."

Natasha grinned and replied, "I'm not sure that you should be putting much stock into that answer. I'm not exactly a role model."

Before Summer could ask for the answer anyway, the front door unlocked, and the conversation ended as Steve and Bucky walked inside, wearing their brilliant incognito looks consisting of hats and little else in the way of disguises. Bucky walked in second, briefly meeting her eyes before looking away. She felt a spark of anxiety, hoping that the prior night's events hadn't affected him too badly.

She glanced back at Natasha, who looked perfectly neutral as Steve dropped his keys on the counter and smiled at them both. Bucky walked to his room without a word to anyone.

"Girl talk go well?" Steve asked, making Natasha give him a wry grin.

"Yeah, it was fun," she answered while Summer looked to the hallway with slight worry.

"I'm sure," Steve replied, grinning back and clearly not believing her. Then he turned to Summer and said quietly, "He's fine. He said he wanted to talk to you when we got back. You can leave David out here."

"Oh. Okay," she replied, definitely anxious now. She got up from the table, feeling Natasha's eyes on her and ignoring her as she gave Steve a smile and then made a pit stop to peer behind the couch, remind David to not launch any more surprise attacks against the scary lady, then turned and headed down the hallway.

His door was left cracked open, so when she reached it, she knocked softly on it before pushing it open. The room was illuminated softly by sunlight through its lone window, and he was sitting at the foot of his unmade bed, his head raising up when she stepped into view. She smiled softly at him and then debated for a moment what to do with the door, leave it slightly open or close it. In the end, she shut it and turned back towards Bucky, who was still watching her.

"How was therapy?" she asked, her tone light without overdoing it, walking to the bed and sitting at his left.

He looked at his hands in his lap and replied quietly, "Same as usual."

Though she didn't know what the usual was, she nodded anyway. "I'm glad you're doing it. It helps. I know."

He turned his gaze on her, and a few seconds passed before he looked down again and said, "I told him about you."

"You hadn't before?"

"Not... everything," he replied, and she understood.

"Oh. So what did he have to say?" she asked, anxiety suddenly blooming anew. This was probably the point where he would tell her to go home because he had enough to deal with, which she wouldn't be able to argue with even if she tried to.

"He said it could be a good thing," he replied, voice still small and tone unsure, like he thought speaking the words out loud were strange. "But to be cautious and... slow. And that long distance might be a good thing."

She blinked a few times, having to briefly process a few things - first, that a therapist would approve of them dating in any capacity, and second, that Bucky was talking about a long distance relationship. It was a big jump from one date and a handful of kisses to that. And third, how could distance ever be a good thing?

"Wow," she eventually replied, while he had been watching her and waiting for a reaction. "Okay."

He studied her for a moment, then said, "And by slow I mean... slow."

His eyes flickered to the rest of the bed behind them, and she nodded. "I know. That's all right. That's better for me, too." Better, maybe, but not easy. Then her tone became slightly disbelieving as she asked, "You really want to do the long distance thing?"

His brows furrowed and he stared off for a moment. "I'd rather you be here."

"I can't," she said softly. "I mean, I could think about it, but... I don't know how I could." She watched him nod absently before she furrowed her brows and asked, "You really like me enough for this?"

He turned and looked at her as he had quite a few times before, like she had just asked him the stupidest question he'd ever heard. She resorted to her default mode and started babbling. "It's just that I've only been here for a few days and you only lived with me a month before, and most of that time we didn't even talk that much, and... this is not how I imagined this trip going, not that I'm complaining, it's just -"

Her heart nearly stopped when a tiny, amused grin showed up on his face in the midst of her rambling, and it did stop when he shut her up by pressing a gentle kiss to her lips. Eventually, she knew that she would have to stop falling apart every time he touched her, but such an idea seemed impossible, even when the kiss was short and sweet and ended with him drawing away before she wanted him to.

A short silence passed as he looked down and gathered his words. "The problem is that I could kill you without really trying, without knowing what I'm doing. And after last night, I..."

After he trailed off, she replied, "I know. But I'm okay. You didn't hurt me. And I know when to leave you alone. I hated hearing you scream in your sleep before but I knew better than to try to wake you up."

"It's more than just that," he replied quietly.

She studied him for a moment, then said, "Then we'll figure it out. I'm not all bright and shiny either, you know." He met her gaze once more, and she added, "And I know what I'm getting into."

"You really don't," he muttered. "You only know what you've read."

It was true. She had offered to listen many times, but he had always refrained from telling her anything of his dreams or memories, and as a result, she could only guess what made him stare off into space or turn away from her.

"Okay," she said. "Then let's change that. Can you tell me what happened last night? What you saw?" His jaw tightening told her that he was not a fan of this idea, but then she reasoned, "I already know that you've killed a lot of people. I know that most of them were good guys. You're not gonna shock me."

She almost told him never mind as she watched him fight with himself, clearly not wanting to tell her, and she didn't want him to do anything he didn't want to do. But before she could tell him, he finally spoke.

"I was killing someone. Crushed her throat, watched her die. I don't know who she was."

She had imagined that it was something like that, since she'd lost him when he started staring at his metal hand when it had touched her neck. Though it was jarring and terrifying and horrible, the slight tremble in his voice and disgust etched on his face would not belong to a man who had willfully done those things.

She drew him out of his sudden dark state by placing her palm over the back of his hand closest to hers, his metal one, and he looked down at it before looking up at her. "See? Didn't scare me away."

"It should," he muttered.

She then made a decision. Since, if they went through with trying to make this an actual relationship, then chances were, this was going to come up a lot. Given that he was struggling to accept what all he had done, he would naturally view everything through guilt-tinted lenses, and think her better off without him or that she would be right to fear him. Best to state her stance on the issue and do everything she could to put it to rest.

"Look," she began, "if you try to do this thing where you tell me that I shouldn't like you or that I should be afraid of you or that I'd be better off without you, it's gonna eventually start pissing me off. Are you forcing me into this?" He shook his head. "Have you ever forced me into doing anything I didn't want to do?" He shook his head again. "I'm here because I want to be. I know who you are and what you've done. And I choose to be here anyway. So... respect my decision, okay?"

He stared at her in slight bewilderment, and she felt a bit tingly following her proclamation, but she couldn't help herself. Between Natasha's warnings and Bucky's self-loathing, she didn't want to be mistaken for someone being taken advantage of or ignorant to the reality of it all.

Eventually, Bucky nodded, and Summer started wondering about all the implications of what they were doing being official and over a long distance. Bucky would need a phone of his own. She would need to tell Paul about him a lot sooner than she had originally planned. And this meant that her personal boycott of boyfriends for David's sake was over. That had the farthest reaching consequences of anything.

"This is a big deal for me," Summer said. "I haven't dated in five years because I didn't want David getting confused or attached to guys who wouldn't stick around. So... you're serious about this, right?"

He nodded, his expression serious, and she thought for a moment before asking, "Are you sure you don't want to, like, try meeting other people first? See what else is out there? Make sure there isn't someone you like better? Especially since I'm gonna be in Virginia and you... you know..."

The look that he gave her told her that he found that idea to be nothing short of horrific. She smiled a little at his aghast reaction and tried to explain, "It's just that, you know, I know it's been a long time for you, and you're a guy and you have..." she trailed off and then realized that she was making a rather naive assumption. She turned to him and asked, "Has it been a long time? I've just been assuming all this time that you probably didn't have the time or chance to..."

"It's been a long time," he confirmed, not quite meeting her eyes as he said this.

She nodded. "Okay. Just checking. For all I knew you were surrounded by a bunch of super hot Natashas on missions."

The way that he spoke his next few sentences told her that he found them utterly embarrassing. "Wouldn't have mattered if I was. They gave me drugs that... prevented distractions."

Was it not bad enough to take someone and brainwash them into fighting against the side they died for? Did they have to erase everything that made him a human being? She thought for a moment of what to say, but expressing how terrible it was wouldn't help him and it would be stating the obvious. She ended up settling on a semi-positive statement. "Well, at least that's over." Then she smiled a little bit. "Clearly."

His eyes met hers again, and she glanced down at their still-joined hands and added, "And if it helps at all, I haven't done much better. There was the time I got pregnant, which doesn't actually count, and besides that," she shrugged to end the statement, trying not to cringe a little as she mentioned that.

When she looked up, he was staring at her in disbelief. "Never?"

There was no point in fighting the blush engulfing her cheeks. "Nope. I mean, I did my share of fooling around in high school, but that's it," she said, feeling her face get hotter by the second. Then she forced out a smile and quipped, "Aren't we a pair?"

He didn't smile back. She let her smile fade as she watched his expression go ever darker as he let his gaze wander to the wall. After awhile, he muttered very quietly, "I'm scared of hurting you."

The honesty in his tone made her chest feel tight. She laced her fingers through his metal ones and she replied, "I'm a little scared of that too. But I'm not scared of you. Does that make sense?"

He looked at her and replied with an exhale that was almost a chuckle, "No."

She smiled and looked down at their hands, shaking her head as she explained, "I guess I mean that I know that if you do hurt me someday, it won't be because you wanted to or meant to."

"That won't matter if you're dead. Or in a coma. Or... if I just hold you a little too tightly and break your arm or -"

This time, it was her turn to grab his face with her free hand and silence him with a kiss. She caught him completely off guard, but he quickly recovered and kissed her back, enough to make her lose her breath and have to pull away a moment later. She smiled and looked up into his eyes, finding them a little heavier-lidded than they were a moment ago. "I've always wanted to do that. And the dresser thing from last night too. I know it didn't end very well, but..."

He stared at her briefly before blinking and replying, "I barely knew what I was doing, I was just..."

"... Yeah, me too," she smiled again, ready to dump ice on her face to put out the cursed and seemingly permanent blush there. "But I guess that can't happen again for... awhile."

He nodded, eyes on her lips, and she wondered if he was even hearing what she was saying. "Slow," he muttered, and she nodded, guessing that he had heard after all, and then his mouth was on hers and she was falling apart all over again.

He started at a lighter, less intense pace, and she reminded herself to not get carried away and lose her head, but that flew out the window at the first slide of his tongue against hers. She let out a sound that instantly embarrassed her, and he shuddered a little when the sound reached his ears, and then it all became a pleasant blur of lips and hands and her blood pumping so loudly that she was sure that he had to be able to hear it.

His left hand was planted on the bed, as far from her as possible on purpose, and that left his other hand to make up the difference, starting at her hair and then sliding to her shoulder, moving down until it gripped her waist while their kisses grew to breathless, rapt messes. He groaned into her mouth when her nails gently scratched against the nape of his neck, and the sound made her suddenly open her eyes and tear her lips away from his.

"Slow," she reminded him in a pathetic voice, gasping, though he had already moved on to her neck, and she wasn't exactly discouraging him by holding him here.

"Slow," he repeated, and the thrum of his voice against her skin between kisses sent a chill down her spine and almost made her brain check out again.

"I don't think... I... Bucky," she half-whined, closing her eyes and quickly losing her will to protest as she felt his breath against her ear.

"Summer," he replied, low and hot in her ear, sending a jolt through her at lightning speed and making her all but jump away from him.

"Okay," she smiled, face on fire, holding him back by his shoulders, "you can't do things like that or else I'll end up... I'll just..."

"You'll what?" he asked, breathing through parted lips and looking at her like he was on the verge of devouring her again.

"Combust," she smiled, "or jump you and completely go against your therapist's advice."

He nodded, then grabbed the back of her head and brought her lips back to his, and she melted against him again, only having so much self control and needing to take what she could get for now. She'd gone so long without anything like this, without passion and without touch, and she would be satisfied with just this - at least, that's what she told herself.

She gasped a little when she felt his teeth nip at her bottom lip, and as it left her back on the brink of losing it, she pulled away panting again, opening her eyes to find his burning into hers before being distracted by her heaving, apparently eye-catching, chest. It reminded her of sitting in front of him on her bed back home, shell-shocked and wearing a shirt that he'd torn in two for completely non-sexy purposes, except this time, he didn't stare with underlying embarrassment and awkwardness, but more like he had every right to look and was slightly annoyed that her shirt was intact this time.

Smiling a little, she placed her finger under his chin and lifted his head, bringing his eyes back to hers before she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Her skin was tingling and she wished that she could just lay back and tell him to do what he wished, but it was for his sake as much as her own that she ignored the voice in her head telling her to do exactly that. She then kissed his jaw and laid her head on his shoulder, her nose lightly touching his neck, and she breathed him in as he eventually brought his right hand to rest on her back.

While her breathing slowly returned to a semblance of normal, a thought rattling around her brain made its way out of her lips. "Any chance of a translation yet?" She would ask him every day until he finally gave in and spilled.

She heard a puff of air leave his nose, then a few seconds passed before he murmured, "Counterproductive."

"To what?"

"Waiting."

She sighed, stifling a groan. "Would begging change your mind?"

"No."

"Would... never mind," she shook her head, not even sure _what_ had just gone through her head but pretty sure that she didn't want to voice it. She straightened up and looked from his lips to his eyes before giving him a small, sweet kiss, then slowly standing up from the bed.

"I'm gonna... go... do something," she said, running her hands through her hair, glancing down at Bucky and finding his eyes glued to her. "Maybe get some air, or stick my head inside your freezer and scream. I don't know. I'm just gonna shut up. But you should come with me."

He nodded, right hand in his own hair as he muttered, "Yeah, just... give me a minute."

She nodded, turning around and biting her lip to keep from smiling, glancing back at him when she reached his door. Was it cruel to take just the tiniest, most minute bit of satisfaction in his frustration, only because she still found it kind of thrilling that she could cause that in him in the first place?

He looked up at her, narrowing his eyes a little at her lingering smile, but it only grew bigger.

It was ridiculous. The entire situation. And yet, as she watched him glare a little at her, this relic from her grandmother's generation who was as damaged as she was an awkward and forever bumbling fool, she was pretty sure that it would all never stop being surreal.

"What?" he asked, finally, clearly thoroughly annoyed with her grin.

She shook her head, turning towards the door and twisting the knob, and as she left the room, she muttered to herself, "You're so hot you make me want to die."

While any normal man with normal hearing would not have been able to pick up what she said, Bucky did, and after she closed the door, he furrowed his brows for a moment, processing those words. Then glanced down at the floor and grinned a little, his lack of being well-versed on modern vernacular not hindering his ability to understand and appreciate the sentiment.

* * *

><p>The days were passing by quickly, Bucky began to notice as he walked Summer and her boy back to their hotel after night had fallen. It was a strange feeling, wondering where the whole day had gone, and wondering what he would do once she was gone again.<p>

Of course, he knew what he'd do. He would just pick up where he'd left off before, and one of his few pleasant distractions would be gone. He'd miss her again.

"Back to the deep thought face," he heard from his right side. He turned his head to see her smile at him as they walked quietly down the sidewalk. "I'm not complaining. Your profile is... it's good."

He would have smiled a little at the slight fumbling of her words, but something wasn't right, and it was setting his nerves on edge. It had been that way since they left the apartment, and at first he tried to shake it off, but the feeling wouldn't leave.

There were fellow pedestrians, as there always was, but one in particular had his gut feeling inching closer and closer to something bad. It was someone dressed similar to him, nondescript and with a hat, almost far enough behind them that he could barely see the figure. It was a short walk to the hotel, but it felt longer than usual the less at ease that he felt.

"You're making me nervous looking back every five seconds."

He glanced at Summer, finding her eyeing him a bit warily. He didn't reply, looking back again instead, and this time, the suspicious figure was gone.

He furrowed his brows, steps slowing as he looked around, taking note of everything that wasn't right. Suddenly all the other pedestrians were gone, and just ahead was an alleyway that marked the halfway point to the hotel.

He stopped walking. Summer did too, and David looked up at them both curiously.

He wasn't thinking at this point. He was operating on his sharpest, most well-developed instincts, which in his case, was far more reliable than his thinking.

Without looking at Summer, he said quietly, "Get your taser out and take cover behind a car."

To her credit, she did not panic or start asking him questions about why and what was happening. She only gaped at him for a moment before digging into her purse and then disappearing with David behind a car parked behind them. After, Bucky walked silently towards the alleyway, eyes still darting all around the perimeter, then focusing when he heard a very faint, nearly imperceptible male voice coming from the small space.

He listened, not moving a muscle. The voice grew slowly closer, though he couldn't decipher what it was saying, and when he could tell that the voice's owner was within a close enough distance, he shot forward into the alleyway and grabbed the man by the neck with his metal hand.

The man let out a noisy cry as Bucky shoved him hard against the concrete wall, and Bucky gave him another good slam headfirst before loosening his grip on his neck slightly and narrowing his eyes. The man was big but not too big, dressed exactly as one who would want to blend in would, and there was one way to determine if the man was an operative or not without having to ask a single question. With his right hand, Bucky searched the man's ear for a comm device, and when he found one, he dropped it to the ground and crunched it under his boot as he glared at the man.

"Who are you?" he growled, noting that the man was making no move to fight back - in fact, he looked absolutely terrified.

"You know," he replied in a choke, barely breathing under Bucky's grip.

Bucky winced and shoved him against the wall again, finding little satisfaction in the sound of the man's skull cracking. "How did you find me?"

"You... you think we ever lost you..."

In the brief moment that Bucky's head clouded with anger, the man produced a knife and tried to drive it into his side; Bucky released his chokehold and grabbed the knife before it could reach him, blade-first with his left hand, and while it could do no damage to the metal, it shorted out the holographic cover on it, leaving it useless and exposing the hand. A knee to the man's groin later, Bucky ripped the blade out of his grip and flipped it in the air, catching it by the handle and then pressing it to the man's throat as his eyes grew wide with fear.

"How many others?" Bucky demanded, but the man shut both his mouth and his eyes. In fact, he had seemed oddly resigned to his fate the moment Bucky grabbed him, like he thought that he was dead already. Bucky pressed the tip of blade just far enough to let loose a droplet of blood and repeated his demand, but at that moment, a woman's startled cry from the street derailed him.

His head snapped up and a cold shot of dread struck him right in the gut, and without blinking, he punched the man in the head with his metal fist, sending him to the ground unconscious before Bucky raced out to the street. What he saw, he'd later find remarkable.

Summer was on her feet, still behind the car, clutching her taser as its charges shocked a man nearly twice as large as she in the chest, who fell to the ground but not completely. Bucky recognized the figure as the same one that had been tracking them before.

Bucky started after the man, who was only felled by the taser for the briefest of moments before he was back up on his feet and racing away. Bucky's feet wanted to race after him, to grab him and slam his head to the ground a few times before extracting the truth from him, but something stopped him in his tracks as the man disappeared from view. He looked at Summer, still holding her taser and staring at him with wide eyes and breathing hard as her son hid behind her with his hands over his ears, and Bucky instantly abandoned the drive to run.

"Are you okay?" he asked, grabbing her upper arm and drawing her close.

She nodded quickly. "Yeah, I'm fine. He didn't see us at first. He was talking to someone in his ear and I heard him say 'winter' and he was headed for you, so I -"

Bucky nodded. "There might be others. Come on."

She nodded as he let her go, then picked up her son and followed him back to the sidewalk. When they reached the alley, Bucky's anger rekindled when he found it utterly empty.

Clenching his jaw, a part of him wanting nothing more but to track down the other guy despite the fact that a voice louder than any other was screaming to get Summer and her child to safety before anything else. He didn't waste time being torn, however, instead taking her by the arm again and walking them quickly back towards her hotel once more.

Watching their surroundings with an eye sharpened even further by adrenaline and still-burning anger, Bucky looked over his shoulder and shoved his metal hand into his jacket pocket as he scowled out into the dark street and muttered in Summer's ear, "Call Steve."

* * *

><p>While it had not been nearly as traumatic as her last encounter with HYDRA, Summer's hands still shook as she fumbled with her phone to follow Bucky's order and call Steve. David bounced back much more quickly, surprisingly, only letting her hold him for a moment before squirming to be put down after she finally got the call through to Steve, but that was probably because she had been careful to make sure that he didn't see or hear anything during those few moments of fear. Which was a good thing, because she had heard rather clearly the sound of a skull being bashed against a building several times, all the way from the street, and that wasn't something David needed to hear.<p>

Tasering the other guy had been rather similar to shooting the female HYDRA agent who had threatened her son back in Virginia. She had just done it, without thinking twice, then afterwards felt like she'd been watching herself do it rather than actively participate in the event. All in all, the aftermath was more anxiety-riddled than the event itself. It seemed like that was true of any bad thing.

Bucky walked her back to the hotel so fast that she'd had to half-run to keep up with him, and once they were inside and into her room, he talked to Steve on her phone in hushed tones while pacing about the room, making sure that all of the windows were shut and shielded to the world. She watched him as questions started to swirl through her head, doubts and worries making their way to the forefront, along with Natasha's words from earlier that day.

This was indeed Bucky's normal, and she had no idea how long he would be hunted by others. Maybe he always would be, and things like this would be as routine as brushing her teeth in the morning. His skills, his past, his future, his enemies, it was all part of what came with the territory, and she'd never ask him to change. She was even pretty sure that she could accept the risks to herself to stay close to him, but did it make her the world's worst mother to accept the risks to her son?

While Bucky growled on the phone, she tried to stop overthinking as she dug through her stuff to find David a snack. He was acting like their walk back had been nothing short of routine, and she wasn't sure if that was a poor reflection on her or not. Maybe he was just used to hiding and covering his ears by now.

Frowning at her thoughts, she moved around on autopilot, getting David settled in bed with a movie and a drink to go with his snack, then glancing at Bucky as he stood in a corner of the room near the window, back to her, still muttering on her phone. She sighed and wandered off to the bathroom, wishing her leftover jitters away.

By the time she re-emerged, dressed in her more comfortable sleep clothes as if in the hopes that it could make her more comfortable at every level, she found Bucky perched on the edge of her empty bed and David peering at her from under the covers in his own bed, holding a book in his hands that she often read to him at bedtime. She smiled softly at him and then looked at Bucky. "Everything okay?"

His expression was quite unreadable as he replied quietly, "I'm staying here with you tonight. Just in case."

She blinked, then looked back down at David before nodding. "Okay. Um... I just need to get him to sleep, and then..."

Then what? She didn't know, but he nodded and stood up, handing her her phone when he reached her. She took it, then met his eyes as he furrowed his brows slightly and looked as if he was searching for words, but instead he pursed his lips and stepped around her. She watched as he disappeared from the room, no doubt to do some kind of perimeter check, and she sighed before taking David through his usual bedtime routine.

These days, David slept a lot easier than she did. He fell asleep fast and stayed asleep, but her slumber never managed to be quite as peaceful as it had once been. Tonight was no different, as he fell asleep with little fuss, and she laid next to him in the too-small bed, eyes wide open and brain overactive as ever. She waited to hear the door click open and signal Bucky's return, but it never came.

Instead, as she laid there contemplating her recent decisions and what they meant, a brief chill was her only slight warning before she felt a hand gently touch the bare skin of her upper arm. She gasped and shot up with a start, looking up to see Bucky take a step back quickly with his hands up.

"Sorry, I -"

"No, it's okay," she assured him, willing her breathing to calm down if only to put him more at ease. "I didn't hear you come in. I never hear you coming."

She smiled up at him, but his face was set in a stubborn frown. She sighed and crawled out of the bed, making sure David was comfortably covered up first, then rising to her feet and looking around the small room for a moment. It wasn't overly small, and there was a small couch near the kitchenette on the opposite side of the room, but there was no way that Bucky could comfortably smash himself into it to sleep, and for that matter, neither could she.

"Look, you don't have to stay here..."

"Yes I do."

"But... they weren't after us."

Bucky looked at her with slight impatience as he replied, "They've seen you with me twice now. You're a target now, a way to get to me."

She gulped a little, having not expected that. He looked as if he utterly despised himself for speaking those words. "Oh." She swallowed again and then asked, "So... what does that mean?"

"It means that you're in danger until we find them."

Knowing that "we" couldn't refer to that many people, superpowered or not, she asked, "They were HYDRA?" He nodded. "But... if they know where you are, why would they care about me? I'm not -"

He gritted his teeth as he replied, "I'm not taking any chances."

She didn't exactly want to either. After a moment, she muttered, "I guess those agents that hang out in front of my house will be sticking around."

Bucky nodded. "It would be better if you stayed here, so I can keep you safe myself."

The sentiment made her feel a bit warm, but there was no point in entertaining the notion. "You know I can't." She watched his grimace deepen, and as she tried to think of something else to say, the shine of his metal hand at his side caught her eye. "Did something happen to the hologram thing?"

He nodded, reflexively shoving the offending hand into his pocket, saying nothing. She could feel his frustration and agitation, see it in the way that he hid that part of himself from her view despite the fact that she'd never been uncomfortable with it.

Slowly, she reached forward and gently touched his arm with her fingertips, then let them run down until they reached his wrist. Then she carefully drew his hand from his pocket, letting her fingers tangle easy with the hard, cold metal ones, drawing his stare down to their entwined hands. He always stared when she held that hand.

"Remember what I said earlier about respecting my decision?" she asked. He looked up and nodded. "I meant it." Even if she wasn't currently sure if she respected her decision herself. "I know that things like this come with the territory. And I'm not totally useless. I've defended myself pretty well so far, I think."

"You shouldn't have to," he replied, not meeting her eyes and gently detangling their hands before turning to go sit angrily on the tiny couch.

She sighed yet again. Regardless of how genuinely frightened she was about the situation, she couldn't take watching him ascribe all of the blame to himself when she was hardly an unwilling party. But maybe that was something he would just have to adjust to over time, refraining from heaping guilt upon his head for once. She doubted there was little she could do to make it any better.

Seeing no other better options, she walked to the couch and squeezed into the small space of it that he was not occupying. He didn't look up or acknowledge her until, after a moment or two of semi-uneasy silence, she turned towards him and tried to draw his attention by gently letting her fingers run through his hair. He blinked a few times but still wouldn't look up.

"You can have the bed if you want," she said softly, still trailing through his hair. "Like before."

He shook his head. "I won't sleep anyway."

She furrowed her brows and asked, "At all?"

He shrugged lightly. "Not enough to take your bed."

That made her frown. She could only imagine how not sleeping would make the issues he already had that much worse. "Well, the offer stands if you change your mind."

When he still didn't so much as grunt in acknowledgment, she let her hand drop from his hair to his cheek, then gently moved his head to the side so she could lay a small, easy kiss on his lips. After, she pulled away an inch or two and watched as he looked at her lips, then her eyes, but his own eyes were too far away for her to reach. She didn't want to push him, so she simply kissed him again, on his cheek, and told him to try to sleep before getting up.

At first, it was strange, going to bed with him basically standing guard on the other side of the room, but she reminded herself that they had slept only one thin wall apart for a month not too long ago. And, she had to admit after turning off most of the lights and crawling under the covers, she did feel incredibly safe with him there.

Without his presence, she might not have had a hope of turning off her brain and actually falling asleep, but to her surprise, despite the night's disturbing events and her sudden role as a HYDRA semi-target, she fell asleep relatively quickly. If she wished that he could be lying next to her, holding her in a way that she'd never experienced from anyone ever before, she kept that to herself and let the thought fade into the night.

* * *

><p>In a way, he envied her.<p>

Every cell in his body screamed for sleep, but every defense mechanism in his brain fought against it. The exhaustion that followed him faithfully throughout his days was a fair trade off for a lack of nightmares and a lack of new memories of another death at his hands, or at least that's what he told himself. Even if he didn't resist, the most he could manage was still only a couple of hours, so what was the difference?

He wished that he could sleep like her. Just lay down under a mess of sheets and simply shut down, breathe easily, and maybe awake the next morning feeling slightly more alive than dead. It would be a nice feeling. It would be nice to escape, just for a few hours, the constant strain of trying to keep his head clear of everything weighing it down and trying to twist it into knots he couldn't undo.

He had tried various sleeping pills that Dr. Connor had given him during his first month of therapy. The first batch made no difference, being burned up by his metabolism too fast to do a thing. The second helped him fall asleep but not to stay asleep, and it made his dreams more vivid, which was a particularly cruel torture. After that, he lost interest in trying anything else.

Sleep simply wasn't for him. Maybe it would be someday, but that was no comfort to him now. For now, he had very little else to do but sit and think. And what else could he think about but HYDRA?

He told Steve on the phone earlier that he would not accept being sidelined in the hunt for HYDRA anymore, not after tonight, and that he didn't care what Steve or anybody else thought of it. Stable or unstable, whatever the hell either of those terms meant, he had earned the right to oversee their downfall during his years of "service" to them, and if Steve was half the friend he claimed to be, he wouldn't stand in the way of that.

Steve hadn't had much to say to that. Bucky hadn't cared much either way at the time. Maybe, just maybe, if he managed to get his hands on what was left of HYDRA and got to personally watch the remnants go to hell, maybe he would be able to sleep for once.

And in the meantime, if they touched one hair on either of the heads currently asleep in the room with him, that would most likely ensure that sleep would elude him until his dying day.

It was in the midst of these thoughts, a few hours after Summer had fallen asleep, that a muffled sound from her bed drew his attention. He straightened from the uncomfortably reclined position to sit up and look her way. Another moment or so passed before he heard it again, and that was when he got to his feet and started walking towards her bed.

He could see her moving under the sheets, not exactly tossing and turning, more... struggling. He reached the foot of the bed, then walked around to the side, and something in his chest tightened when he saw her start gasping disjointedly, like she was trying to breathe but no air was reaching her lungs. She was curled up into a tight ball, her hand fisting into the pillow under her head, and his hand was on her shoulder before he had a chance to think twice.

He shook her as gently as he could, calling her name softly, but it didn't rouse her. Her breathing became more erratic, and he gave her a firmer shake and said her name more loudly. She stopped for a minute, but only for a minute. His third shake was what woke her.

She sucked in a huge breath and opened wide, confused eyes, shooting up in the bed as he took a step back to avoid her head colliding with his. She looked around, looking from the bed to her lap to Bucky as he knelt beside the bed, feeling a bit clueless as to what to do now. Then relief spread visibly across her features, and her shoulders relaxed and slouched as she lowered her face into her hands.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. "Stupid dream."

He hadn't thought much beyond what he would do once she woke up, so he lingered slightly awkwardly next to the bed as she calmed herself down. After a moment, she raised her head and turned her tired eyes to him, quietly murmuring, "Thank you for waking me up."

He nodded, unsure of what else to do. The exhausted part of him wanted to slump forward on her bed and not move until dawn, but the other part of him led him to stand up and start to head back to the too-small couch.

However, her hand on his stopped him before he could take more than one step away.

"Please don't go. Can you just... can you sit with me?"

He looked down at her, confusion slightly growing on his face. "Sit?"

She let go of his hand and shook her head slightly. "Yeah, I mean... just stay with me for a minute?"

He opened his mouth to say something, though he didn't know what, but nothing came out when he watched her shift slightly to the side to make room for him. Then she looked up at him, a faint neediness in her eyes that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen before, and without another thought, he gave in and slid himself down into the bed.

He was aware of how odd he looked because he felt even weirder, sitting with one foot on the floor and one on the bed because the space was so small, but not a moment passed before she took his arm and led him to lean back against the headboard. He looked at her somewhat questioningly, but she simply dragged the sheets up around her and then curled up to his left side, between his body and his arm.

For a second, he was at an utter loss. If she wanted to do this, why wouldn't she pick his other side, which was considerably softer and probably a lot more comfortable to curl up to, not to mention less obviously dangerous? He held his breath as she laid her head on his chest, right over his heart, and brought her hand up to rest in front of her eyes. His arm hung suspended at his side, angled away from her and awkward as he fumbled with what to do. She exhaled and closed her eyes, and his mind raced with all the horrible things that could happen if she fell asleep like this and he let himself doze off as well.

Her voice interrupted his thoughts, soft and sleepy as she murmured against the shirt under her cheek. "Your heart is racing."

He didn't reply, still keeping his arm away from her. The scent of her hair, so close to his nose, was flooding his senses and taking him back to a time when the scent had been one of the only familiar, comforting things that he encountered on a daily basis. It had the same relaxing, lulling effect that it always had, but he couldn't let it, or the warmth of her as she molded herself to his side, coax him to sleep.

"Bucky?"

He blinked out of his thoughts. "Yeah?"

"Can you wait to get up until I'm back to sleep?"

"Okay," he replied softly, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again and staring down at her, at the way in which she was half-draped over him. It felt better than he could have imagined.

He felt her relax completely against him when he finally let his left hand come to rest on her back. Her breathing evened out and her sleep returned to her as he let his metal fingers run through the ends of her hair, wishing those fingers could feel it the way that his other ones could.

His eyes grew heavy, but fear of waking from a nightmare and harming her kept him from giving in to the kind of rest that Summer made look so easy in comparison, even if her own sleep wasn't as peaceful as it should have been.

He kept his promise to keep her close until she was sound asleep once more, and he lingered still beyond that. He might not have slept, but her presence and her warmth kept his thoughts calm and more peaceful than they'd been in ages, and he would not dare to not take advantage of that while he could.

**A/N: First let me just say - I LOVE YOU ALL :D I am super grateful for the response to this story and the reviews and feedback you guys have left. I'm generally terrible with answering them individually, but let me say that I am incredibly grateful for each one and I greatly appreciate the time and effort it takes to leave them. So THANK YOU :) I'll see you guys next week, as usual :D **


	4. Chapter 4

During her very eventful week in New York, Summer encountered a few moments that served little other purpose other than to make her stop and wonder, just for a short time, what her life could be like if certain circumstances were different. One of these moments occurred on her second to last day there, as she stood at Steve's sink after washing a few dishes, watching her son teach Bucky how to play Angry Birds on the living room couch.

David taught by example, showing Bucky how to use the controls and what the object of the game was, and then he handed Bucky his tablet before watching eagerly over his shoulder. Bucky eyed the game with curiosity, a slight furrow to his brows as he tried to copy what David had done. Summer watched, neither boy paying any attention to her, and she smiled as Bucky's concentration visibly grew while he kept playing. Occasionally David would point something out to give him tips, and Bucky would nod his thanks, their conversation as silent as David himself.

And so, as she stood there with a small smile on her face, she let her mind drift to thoughts that she used to try her best to avoid. Thoughts like what life would be like if she hadn't been a single mother from David's conception on, if his father hadn't been a despicable loser, if she'd had someone to share things like first steps and other milestones with. God knew there had been times when she had needed someone, like during the struggle to get David's diagnosis and the even harder struggle to provide him the stability that he needed to function on a daily basis.

What a difference it could have made just to have a bit of encouragement on those nights where she felt useless, stupid, like a clueless kid trying to raise a kid with needs that surpassed her comprehension. Someone who she could have cried to and vented to, trusted and relied on when she needed to take a break before she fell apart.

Naturally, the next thing her mind did was imagine Bucky in Mark's place. In his current state, he wasn't the best candidate for fatherhood, but she imagined everything being different, meeting him under different circumstances and maybe even in a different time. Maybe she would have lived here, met him here, or maybe he would have been stationed in Virginia, just another soldier that she might have met and been charmed by in a far more conventional way than what had actually occurred.

David would have been conceived in love. He'd probably have giant blue eyes instead of brown ones. She wouldn't carry the stubborn, haunting memories that she did, and she would trust a whole lot easier.

Almost lost to her thoughts, she suddenly realized that Bucky had been staring quite intently at the tablet in his hands without making a move for quite awhile. He looked like he was piecing a puzzle together, in the midst of a serious analysis, and she tried to hide her smile as she watched him finally make his move. The sounds that she heard from the tablet and the slight grin on his face told her that his precise tactical plotting against the green piggies had paid off with three stars, and her heart warmed when she watched him share the grin with an excited David as he handed the tablet back. The boy had been stuck on that particular level for days.

Then Bucky's eyes met hers from across the room, and her heart skipped a little as she smiled at him before looking away, pretending to busy herself with the sink.

Of course, it never helped anything to think on impossible fantasies and how the past could be better than what it was, but she had her moments where she couldn't help herself. Watching Bucky beat a level of Angry Birds for her kid had done the trick. How could it not?

After a few more moments she spent idling to get her head back on straight, she headed to the couch herself, sitting on David's other side and giving them both a smile as she settled down on the cushions.

"So. Angry Birds. Addictive, right?" she asked with a grin, to which Bucky shrugged slightly. "You should download it on that shiny new phone of yours."

David immediately got bored with her intrusion into his previous fun, so he slid off of the couch and moved his gaming to the kitchen table. She didn't think much of it - he wasn't much for being sandwiched between two talking people. She turned her eyes back on Bucky and asked, "Can I see it?"

His eyes flashed blank. "See what?"

"Your phone," she chuckled, holding her hand out. He blinked at her before pulling the thing from the pocket of his jeans, and after she took it from him, she nonchalantly scooted herself into his side and made the back of her head comfortable on his right shoulder as she unlocked the phone. He tensed up a bit automatically at her sudden proximity, but she had figured out days before that when he did that, it didn't imply negativity. He simply wasn't used to such contact being a routine thing yet, and she could relate to that. After all, she still felt like she was back in sixth grade every single time he kissed her.

"All right," she sighed, "I'll download the basics for you. Certain apps you just need to have, at least at first. Angry Birds is one of them. It'll get boring after awhile, but it's a great way to kill time if you have to."

He relaxed as she went on, adding some life to his previously very bare, very new, phone. He had exactly two contacts, Steve and herself, and she had no idea what keeping in touch with him after she went home would involve. She hoped it was texting rather than phone calls, because just the thought of talking to him on the phone regularly made her start overthinking and stressing out. She always felt like she made an even bigger idiot of herself on the phone than in person, and that was saying something.

His right hand had taken to playing with her hair as she played with his phone, and every so often she felt his breath brush her ear, but she managed to stay focused on the task at hand. "Okay, so I've got you started there, what else... oh! I know what needs to happen."

He watched as she opened the phone's camera, and his voice was a rumble against her ear as he asked, "What?"

"You," she smiled, glancing up at him, "are going to take your first selfie with me. It goes with the territory of being in the 21st century."

His face was pure confusion. "Take a what?"

"A picture of yourself," she explained. "People go way overboard with selfies, especially girls, but it's easier to get away with it when someone else is in the picture with you."

"But... why?"

She sighed a little, angling closer to him and looking up again as she said, "I don't know, people are obsessed with themselves. It doesn't matter. I just want a picture with you."

He fell silent then, his confused expression melting into something softer. She then smiled brightly and held up his phone in front of them, chirping, "Smile!"

He didn't smile, however, and the resulting photo was hilariously terrible, between her overdone smile and his slight confusion, so she tried again. This time, she tried to appear more normal, but her nose caught an odd angle and looked enormous while Bucky had gone from looking mildly confused to mildly surprised, so she deleted that one and started over. She did this over and over, each picture looking just as bad as the one before, and eventually she just started laughing at each failed attempt. When she felt him start chuckling with her, laughing for the first time since their date at the start of the week, the same warmth that she had felt then flooded her all over again, and she almost didn't notice him snatching the phone out of her hand.

She looked up at him questioningly, but he merely shrugged at her before pulling her closer against him and holding the phone up. She glanced at the phone just as he pushed the button, and for the first time, a decent picture was taken at last.

He let her take the phone back to inspect the picture, and she fell silent as she stared at it. There was just the ghost of a smile on his lips, leftover from when he'd laughed a bit, and it just reached his eyes enough to soften them and confirm that he wasn't forcing it. She glanced at herself and didn't think she looked too bad, but she could have been cropped out of the picture entirely and still been perfectly happy with the results.

She started messing around on the phone again, and he asked softly, "What are you doing?"

"Sending that to myself," she replied, holding up the phone to give him a better view. "Here, watch how you send a picture. Just in case you ever want to send me one and torture me."

He watched and paid attention, his hand going back to playing with her hair as he asked, "Why would that torture you?"

She shot him a sideways glare and replied, "Don't play dumb with me. You know exactly why."

His eyes flashed in amusement, then flickered down to her lips as he asked, "Can I kiss you?"

Cursing her instantly and pleasantly knotting stomach, she glanced over at David to find him still at the table, engrossed in his games, kicking his feet back and forth as they dangled off the chair. She looked back to Bucky and nodded, murmuring, "Make it quick."

He obeyed, leaning in and holding her close with the hand that was already in her hair, kissing her somewhere between softly and roughly and as quickly as she requested. He didn't pull away without stealing a taste of her with his tongue, making her insides dance further, not even slightly used to it yet. It was a good problem to have.

After, she bit her lip and looked down to try to avoid the very direct eye contact that still made her squirm sometimes, and as she pretended to find his phone fascinating as it sat on his lap, she suddenly remembered one more thing she had to do on it and snatched it back.

"What are you doing now?" he asked, amused as she opened his browser and went to Google.

"Changing your background," she replied. The standard one that came with the phone was of water droplets, not a terrible thing, but the picture made her think of cold, rainy days. Bucky had dealt with enough of the cold, in her opinion, so a change was in order. The question was, what to change it to?

He watched in silence as she tried a few different options, eventually settling on something that looked like it came out of some calendar somewhere. It was a tropical beach at sunset, full of warm orange and red tones contrasted by the deep blue of a vast ocean and the softness of a sandy shore, and once it was done, she handed it back to him.

"Why'd you choose that?"

She shrugged, settling her head on his shoulder again and replying, "It looked warm."

Silence fell then, a comfortable one, and his hand drifted from her hair down her back, then to her waist where it lingered as he brushed his lips against her forehead. She let out a long exhale, closing her eyes briefly as she mentally came to terms with the fact that she really did not want to go home.

The apartment was nearly bare but for the basic essentials, as everything else had been packed away the day before and sent to a new location somewhere else in the city. Steve had been mostly gone since Bucky's run-in with HYDRA, apparently off chasing leads with Natasha or something, and Summer had been trying to distract Bucky while he waited for news. So far, she had been mildly successful. He despised being sidelined, but Steve had promised to let him come along when they actually found something worth checking out. In the meantime, Bucky had continued staying with her in her hotel, making them basically inseparable.

It was all still highly surreal, and she was pretty sure that once she was back to being on her own, she would be the most paranoid person in the world, but that wasn't the only reason why she was half-dreading going home.

But, life was what it was, and wishing she could stay was as productive as wishing the past had been different. She just hadn't anticipated leaving being as difficult as she knew it was going to be.

* * *

><p>"Why doesn't he talk?"<p>

Bucky asked the question quietly, sitting on a park bench next to Summer as David sat in the grass, hunting for bugs to inspect. Being outside wasn't necessarily the safest idea, but Summer had insisted, making Bucky their bodyguard for the day. At least the day was slightly warmer than it had been lately, due to the sun that was currently making a somewhat rare appearance.

Summer glanced up at him and paused for a moment before replying, "He's... do you remember the first day you spent with us?"

He did, but it was extremely blurry. His brain had been only partially functioning then, erratically at best. "A little."

"Oh. Well, now that I think of it, I don't know why I didn't think to explain it better to you," she said, her cheeks turning a slight pink. "I'm sorry. He's autistic."

He remembered that word, but he still had no idea what it meant.

"It means his brain works differently than other kids' brains," she explained. "Autism is really common now and nobody really knows why. It can range from mild to severe. David's considered more severe because he's nonverbal and some other factors, but he's done really well with therapy. He doesn't avoid all eye contact, and he does communicate, just not through words. The thing with him is routine. He needs it badly. That's why the last two weeks have been kind of stressful, but he's done a lot better than he would have a year ago."

He listened, falling silent for a moment before another question found it's way out of his mouth. "Where's his father?"

Her expression changed a bit, and he instantly wished he hadn't said anything. He had deduced enough from what she had previously said about the man to understand what had happened and why David existed, and he chose not to think about it, because it made him want to find the man and snap his neck.

"He's in Texas," she replied. "He sends me a check every month and that's about it. I prefer it that way."

He waited a moment before asking another question, one that made his jaw clench a little. "Did he go to prison?"

He saw her wince a little bit, her hands fidgeting in a way that expressed how much she didn't like talking about this. "No. He... well, we were both drunk. He was a lot farther gone than I was. I had just found out that my grandma was dying, and I wanted to forget and just be numb, so I got drunk with him. He didn't even remember what he did the next day. And I was in denial. By the time I snapped out of it, it was too late for... physical evidence."

He furrowed his brows. "Being pregnant wasn't evidence?"

Still fidgeting, she sighed, "I just knew how it would look. His dad was the sheriff's deputy and for some reason I thought that meant nobody would believe me. Plus, being drunk at the time and then waiting almost two weeks to come forward..." she shook her head. "I don't know. I should have. I wish I had. It was just really overwhelming and I was terrified when I found out I was pregnant. And then when I told him what he did, because he didn't remember, he..."

Bucky listened closely, prompting her on gently. "He what?"

"... He was genuinely horrified," she muttered. "But then he blamed me. Said I knew that he was lousy when he was drunk and that I should have known better."

She spoke in a very resigned, unaffected tone, but the more she spoke, the angrier Bucky felt.

"Anyway, so I told him that I was pregnant, and at first he acted like he would help me and be involved, even though I didn't want him to be. Didn't last very long. And the minute we knew that David was different, which was pretty early on, he left town, and I haven't seen him since."

He filed this information with the other bits that she had told him about the man, like the broken arm that he'd inadvertently caused and then didn't take seriously enough to take her to the hospital for, and after taking a breath, he asked, "What's his name?"

"Mark."

"What's his last name?"

She looked at him then, her eyes widening a little bit. "Why?" When he answered with a mere blank look, she smiled nervously and said, "Uh... I'm not sure that I should tell you while you have that look on your face. If it helps at all, I can tell you that my brother took a week off from med school after it happened to come home and beat the crap out of him. And he did a pretty good job of it."

Bucky doubted that. He could do a much better job himself.

"Really. It's fine."

Bucky shook his head slightly. "No it isn't."

She paused, then muttered, "I know. It just... _is_, you know? It's over. I don't think about it. Well, I have nightmares still, but I try not to think about it."

Connecting the dots in his head, Bucky furrowed his brows and asked, "The one you had the other night, was it..."

She stared off towards David as she nodded somewhat miserably. Her hands weren't fidgeting anymore but they were stiff and odd on her lap. "Yep."

He refused to ask her any more questions, knowing firsthand how recalling such things and being forced to talk about them was exceedingly difficult. But he thought back on watching her during that nightmare, how she had been seemingly struggling to breathe and fighting for air, and he didn't think he could stand to know the details of it.

Her forcibly lighthearted tone cut through the murderous thoughts in his head. "This is really crappy park conversation, by the way. Let's change the subject. Feels super nice today, doesn't it?"

She smiled uneasily at him as she spoke, and though he couldn't quite muster up one to give back, he did something that he wasn't sure he'd done yet, which was take her hand in his - the one that wasn't hiding from the world in his pocket - and simply hold it. It was usually her who gave the comforting touches, who would link their hands and let her touch pull him back from the brink, and he thought that it was only right for him to try to do the same for once, whether it did her any good or not.

They sat in silence for a few moments, until David came scampering up to his mother and held out his hand while giving her a toothy grin. She leaned forward to see what he had and then wrinkled her nose and said, "Oh, isn't that cool... but you know what, I think Bucky wants it more than I do."

Bucky looked at her in slight alarm, then looked himself when the boy held his hand out to him. It was just a fuzzy caterpillar. Wariness gone, he held out his right hand and let the boy dump the insect into his palm, and next to him, Summer squirmed away slightly, looking at the thing like it was something other than a harmless fuzzy creature and something quite distasteful.

He let it crawl over his hand, watching it curiously, then glancing to his side when he saw Summer lean forward off the bench to tie David's shoelaces. Her hair was off to one shoulder, the shoulder closest to him, and stifling a grin that still felt odd on his lips, he silently extended his hand towards her. David saw, and when he looked at Bucky questioningly, he winked at the kid. Then he stealthily let the caterpillar crawl from his hand to Summer's shoulder.

"Okay, done," Summer said, patting David's shoe and then straightening up, as Bucky watched the caterpillar creep from the top of the sleeve of her shirt to her exposed neckline. She showed no sign of noticing, straightening out David's shirt and then sitting back against the bench. Bucky kept an eye on her, trying to do so without being too obvious, at least until he saw her swipe at her shoulder as if to scratch an itch. Her hand froze when she brushed against the insect, and then she looked down and promptly squealed and jumped off of the bench.

Drawing the attention of almost the entire park - which, on second thought, probably wasn't the greatest idea he'd ever had - she screeched highly girlishly and smacked wildly at her shoulder, inadvertently knocking the thing right into the front of her shirt, which made her all the more hysterical. David was pointing at her and laughing like Bucky had never heard before, and he wasn't aware of his own smile and his own laughter until Summer finally got rid of the caterpillar and then turned furious eyes on him.

"Did you put that thing on me? You put it on me, didn't you?"

He shrugged innocently, not anticipating how enticing he found her outraged expression. Maybe he needed to provoke her more often. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She narrowed her eyes and then said, "Oh sure you don't. And stop biting your lip."

He paused. Was he biting his lip? He hadn't noticed, but apparently he was. "Why?"

"Because I'm trying to be pissed at you, and it's distracting. And stop looking at me like that too."

"Like what?"

"Like..." she fumbled for a minute, closing her eyes and then shaking her head. "Something I can't say in front of little ears."

He merely grinned in reply, and he knew it would disarm her. It did, instantly softening her features before she inevitably threw up her hands and then sat back down on the bench, refusing to look his way as she raised her eyebrows to the still-giggling David. "Traitor."

At the very least, he had lightened the mood. He kept his eyes on her as she tried her hardest to ignore him, but eventually, she broke out into a smile and her face reddened as she half-exclaimed, "Stop burning holes into me with your eyes!"

But he didn't stop, and the more flustered she got, the more she made him smile, and it was a feeling worth a whole lot more than he would have ever guessed before.

* * *

><p>When Summer's last full day in New York arrived, she felt like she had blinked and then the week had gone by, and she supposed that wasn't far from the truth. She repacked what she had brought that morning, wanting to be ready for her 9 AM flight the next day, listening to the shower run in her hotel room's bathroom, trying not to imagine what was currently taking place in there and failing miserably.<p>

It would be like a giant sugar crash when she got home, except with hormones instead of glucose. This was an entirely new experience, and when she stood in the middle of the room, chewing her lip and letting her imagination get away from her to the soundtrack of the shower and the mental image of the person in it, a sudden and unexpected kick to the shin from David snapped her out of it.

"Ow! What the heck?" she exclaimed, holding her leg as David chuckled at her and then ran off to get into something. She sighed and sat down on the edge of her bed, trying to get her head straight just as she heard the water shut off.

But it really wasn't so bad, she reasoned, because in just a day, she would probably be feeling more paranoid than anything else, so distractions were a good thing. And she'd never personally encountered such a stunningly effective distraction before.

She realized that she had been sitting and staring off into space for way too long again when the bathroom door clicked open, and she quickly - and poorly - tried to make herself look busy as the object of her fixation walked out into the main room. Though, she used the word "walk" loosely, since she had yet to figure out a word to aptly describe exactly how he moved from one point to another.

She tried to be subtle about watching him head towards the couch where his phone was, running his hand through his wet hair and making a t-shirt and jeans look absolutely ridiculous as he - strolled? No, that wasn't right. Sauntered? Better, but still not good enough. Was there a word in the English language fit to describe a man who walked everywhere like he was about to either go blow up national landmarks or go ravage some poor unsuspecting woman, maybe do the second thing on the way to the first? Was the walk something he learned in his training? In between weapons and fight training, did he have to do a "Intimidating, Threatening, & Sexually Appealing Walking 101" class that he clearly aced? Was her fixation on the matter a clear giveaway of the sudden tidal wave of frustration he'd caused within her in the last week?

All too late, she snapped out of her staring when Bucky turned around and looked at her, first quite normally and then with slight concern as he said her name. She shook her head and smiled stupidly before muttering something under her breath and then taking refuge in the bathroom, where she rolled her eyes at herself and wondered when she'd learn to act like a normal human being.

The day passed as quickly as all the others had, maybe even faster, and still mostly free of Steve just like the last three had been. David was a bit bummed out that his hero was always gone when they were at his apartment, but there wasn't much to be done about it. Steve had promised to be there to see them off, but short of that, they simply had to make do with Bucky. Summer was pretty sure that she'd survive.

The routine had become spending the daylight hours at the apartment, where she made Bucky feel at home again by feeding him her cooking all day, then spending the night back at her hotel. Since this was her last day, she figured she would make it extra special and make him the chocolate cake he'd been a fan of during his stay with her. He liked it just as much this time around, and then the three of them ended up in his room after an unintentional smoke situation with the stove forced them into clearer air while the living room aired out.

It was so domestic that Summer could almost forget the kind of people she was dealing with, at least until it was time to head back to the hotel, which was when she was suddenly faced with something that left her completely forgetting how to be a human being again.

She had walked out of Bucky's room first, David in tow, and when she heard familiar male and female voices coming from the kitchen, she assumed that Steve and Natasha had returned early tonight. Thinking little of it, she walked out of the hallway and then slowed down immediately at the sight of the back of a rather large blonde head seated at the table with the two people that she had expected to see. Then she heard a voice decidedly deeper than she expected and somehow vaguely familiar, and as she walked closer, Steve gave her a friendly smile and nodded her way.

In front of the stranger was a gigantic slice of the cake she had made, and when he looked up at her, she felt her eyes widen to comedic proportions. He wasn't waving a hammer around or wearing a big red cape - in fact, he looked deceivingly human in jeans and a black v-neck shirt with his long, undeniably glorious blonde hair tied back save for a few pieces - but she would have recognized Thor anywhere. Any good citizen of Earth would after he eternally changed the way that mankind thought of the universe.

"Hello," the Prince of Asgard smiled, and she smiled back in a way that she knew looked most likely terrifying, what with her eyes popping out of their sockets.

"Thor, this is Summer and her son David," Steve supplied helpfully. "They're... friends. And Summer, I'm sure you know who Thor is."

"Yeah," she half-laughed, more choking than anything, and at her side, David looked up at Thor with a wary and unbelieving expression before apparently deciding that the man was an imposter and losing interest while his mother continued to gawk. "I made that cake," she supplied, having partially no idea what she was saying.

"Ah! Then you have my most sincere compliments!" his voice boomed out, booming despite the reasonable volume of his tone, if such a thing was possible. "It is delicious!"

Her smile managed to get even stupider as she half-slurred a thank you, and then Bucky was suddenly in the kitchen next to her, eyeing the stranger with distrust.

"Bucky, this is Thor," Steve said instantly, and Bucky's expression relaxed a bit. "And Thor, this is my best friend, Bucky."

"An honor to meet you," Thor nodded. "I have heard many great things about you."

Bucky glanced at Steve and then did a slight double take when he saw Summer's still-awestruck expression. After looking at her briefly as if she was insane, he nodded to Thor. "Same here."

Summer was mildly aware of Natasha smirking at her unashamedly adolescent moment, and she almost started protesting when Bucky firmly grasped her hand and started leading her towards the door.

"Have fun, kids," Natasha called out, thoroughly enjoying herself, and Thor raised his hand in a slight wave, and the last thing anyone heard before Bucky literally dragged Summer through the door was her half-dreamily noting "_He's so pretty_" before the door closed in front of her face.

After, at the table, the three occupants sat in brief silence before Natasha broke it. "She's kind of cute. I see it now. You know, in a walking-disaster sort of way."

Steve shrugged and smiled. "Well, Bucky doesn't seem to be losing interest, that's for sure."

Looking mildly confused, Thor said, "I thought you said that he was frozen as you were until only a few months ago."

Steve nodded. "Yeah. Off and on. Mostly on. They only took him out of cryo for missions."

"And he already has a lady?" Thor asked in genuine surprise.

Steve inclined his head and chuckled a bit. "Bucky's... well, he's Bucky."

* * *

><p>Summer bounced all the way back to the hotel, to Bucky's slight irritation. She was far more starstruck over meeting Thor than she had been over meeting Steve, though in her defense, she'd had time to prepare for meeting him as opposed to Thor. Still, Bucky didn't see the big deal over meeting the guy, and after one too many comments about how amazing he looked in the flesh ("Even with the super blonde hair!"), the Thor talk was officially grating on his nerves.<p>

She would be leaving tomorrow, and it didn't seem fair that he'd already spent too long of a time that night listening to her rave about some alien who he didn't find nearly as remarkable as she did.

Once they were back inside her hotel room, shedding coats and flipping on lights, he decided that it was time to put an end to the incessant chatter.

"... And I really wish I'd gotten a picture. I wish I could tell my brother. He wouldn't believe me if I did. I mean, I've met, like, three Avengers now, and not even in a like off-the-street kind of way, but a -"

With one quick glance to make sure that David's attention was elsewhere, Bucky grabbed her wrist and spun her around and finally silenced her with a kiss that was just hard enough to drive his point home. She froze immediately, clearly taken by surprise, and when he pulled away, she looked up at him a bit dazed and asked, "I freaked out a little bit, didn't I?"

He shrugged, releasing his hold on her. "Thought you might need to take a breath."

"Sorry," she grinned a little sheepishly. "I was just... not expecting that. And it was _Thor_."

"Didn't seem all that great to me," Bucky remarked, walking around her to go sit on the couch he'd been spending quite a bit of time on the last few nights.

"Well, you're a guy, so..."

Deciding to stay silent for fear of fueling another Thor-fest, Bucky checked his phone for the time and noted that David's bedtime was fast approaching. The kid was out every night at almost the exact same moment each time, and the nice thing was the bit of time afterwards when he had Summer to himself. Since this was the last night he had for such a thing in the foreseeable future, he anticipated it a bit more than usual.

As had become the routine, he watched as both mother and child disappeared into the bathroom to get ready for bed. They would take about five minutes in there and then emerge dressed for bed, the kid probably in Captain America pajamas and Summer in mostly formless, unremarkable clothes, and then she would read him a story and he would be asleep in about another ten minutes. Bucky would watch, trying to remember if his mother used to do the same things with him, then give up when he wouldn't be able to recall a thing. But, by then, Summer would be guiding him by the hand to her bed, which was where he would make valiant efforts to control his rapidly growing instincts and innocently hold her as she fell asleep. It had become slightly routine by then, and he accepted it for what it was. Sort of.

His first clue that this night might deviate from his expectations was when she re-entered the room wearing far less than he had anticipated. She wasn't indecent, but the small pink shorts and very fitted white camisole was, to his eyes, a lot different from oversized shirts and what she called "yoga pants". He never looked up from gazing at her legs to see if she noticed his staring.

He shook himself out of it after she perched on the side of David's bed to read to him, and he shifted on the couch, letting out a silent sigh as he unconsciously raked a hand through his hair. He was starting to see his therapist's logic in advocating a long-distance relationship, because without distance, he was pretty sure he'd crack and fail very spectacularly at the whole waiting thing, if Summer allowed it. If she would or not, he had no idea.

He heard her gently beckon him up sooner than expected, and he looked up in time to see her smile a bit shyly and then make her way towards the other bed. He stood up too quickly, too eagerly, eyes instantly gluing to her hips as she walked, kicking off his shoes before following her.

The room was silent but for the low sound of the television playing some kids' movie in front of the beds, and Summer grabbed the remote to turn it off as he sat wordlessly on the side of her bed. The room darkened considerably then, illuminated mostly just by street lamps outside of the windows, but it was perfectly light enough to allow him to watch her leave the remote on top of the TV and then come to her side of the bed.

She sat and then started fiddling with her hair, tying it back to keep it out of her face as she slept, and then she looked at him and gave him a small smile. "Tired?"

He shrugged. He was the opposite of tired at the moment. But she had a morning flight to catch, so he assumed that she wanted to fall asleep relatively quickly. He shifted back on the bed, getting in the half-sitting position that he was now used to taking, and waited for her to curl up against him.

Their eyes met, and her mouth opened, but she shut it without saying a word, then drew up the sheets at their feet as she made her way to him. He held his breath when she laid a soft kiss on his lips, then drew back and ran her eyes over his face before kissing him one more time. Then she laid her head down on his chest, molding herself to him, and he closed his eyes as his left arm curled around her and held her there.

"So you're moving tomorrow?" she asked quietly, her voice a light rumble against his ribs.

"Yeah," he replied, letting his metal fingertips trace invisible lines across the top of her back, exposed by her top. She shivered a little from the coolness, but he was starting to think that she liked it.

"Is it somewhere super secret? Super secure superhero super hideout?"

He could hear the smile in her voice. "Sort of."

"Mmm. And here I'm just going back to the boring Virginia woods."

He almost reminded her that she didn't have to, but he knew it would do no good, since she believed that she did. She snuggled closer and let out a breath, and he stayed silent, a little - or a lot - frustrated that he was letting his last night with her just slip away like this.

Her breathing slowed some, and he clenched his jaw a little bit, cursing himself for letting her fall asleep like that. But, to his surprise, only a few moments after he had realized that the night was already over, Summer sat up with a frustrated sigh, her back to him as she ran a hand over her face. "I am so wide awake. I knew this was going to happen."

He sat up, away from the headboard, eyes a little wide with the unexpected development. Maybe he could salvage the night after all, whatever that meant. He had no plan, no words that he could think of saying, not even with their separation looming on the horizon. His eyes roamed from her hair to her mostly-bare shoulders, then to the parts of her back that he'd been running his fingers across just a moment ago, and he drew closer to her without realizing he was doing it.

"I don't like flying anyway. Now I'm gonna be a zombie all day tomorr- _ahh_..."

He almost grinned, the press of his lips to the back of her neck drawing the sound of surprise out of her as he flipped her ponytail over her shoulder and kissed the same spot again before trailing forward, towards her ear, while his right arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. She let her head fall to the side, giving him easier access, and her she steadied herself with a hand on his thigh as he took his time, not wanting to rush as he tried to savor the way she trembled under the his every kiss. He knew he would be replaying it in his head in the coming days.

He had just reached her ear when she turned her head towards him and caught his lips with hers, and she kissed him with zero restraint, angling as close to him as she could get in their current position. His hand on her waist slid down over her side, then to her hip and over the small shorts she wore before running languidly down her leg, past her knee and back up again while her tongue dancing in his mouth sparked a fire within him.

On its way back up, his hand ventured inward up her thigh, and she jerked a little before breaking away and covering his hand with hers, stopping him. "This is weird," she blurted out, panting a little, and at his confused look, she explained, "Not this, but doing this with David right there."

He frowned, looking around the room and trying to think. Since the room was rather small and there was really only one option if she really needed complete privacy, he untangled himself from her and stood up from the bed, dragging her with him by her hand. He had her inside the bathroom in a flash, and he closed the door by pushing her against it and picking up their kiss where they'd left it at. She moaned as the door clicked shut, closing them into pitch blackness. His right arm was around her waist as his left hand fumbled around for the light switch, and when the light scratch of her nails against the back of his head made him shiver, his left hand slapped against the wall, and he accidentally demolished the light switch, shorting out the wiring in the process and taking out the entire overhead light.

They both froze as the room was briefly illuminated by sparks before it fell back into darkness. Bucky took an instinctive step back, shoving his left hand behind him as if afraid that it would grow a mind of its own and then destroy Summer too.

"Hey, hey, it's all right," he heard her say in the darkness, along with her footsteps as they moved her to the sink. He heard a bit more movement, and then a small mounted light next to the bathroom mirror flicked on and bathed the room in a much softer light than the one he'd just taken out. She then turned around and wasted no time placing her hands on his shoulders and looking in his suddenly wary eyes as she said, "It was a light switch. Don't fall apart over a light switch. Please. Especially not tonight."

His eyes flickered from hers to the wall, where there was now a small crater where the switch had once been. Just when he was about to crawl back inside of his mental hole and never touch her again for fear of leaving a similar crater somewhere on her person, she grabbed his face and looked at him with a sudden fierceness that he wasn't sure he'd seen before.

"Bucky. Look at me."

He looked at her.

"Listen to me."

He listened.

"Your arm isn't gonna go away. It's always gonna be there. And that light switch probably isn't gonna be the last thing you accidentally destroy with it. And I don't care. Okay? I don't care. I mean it. Now can you please kiss me again before I explode?"

He struggled for a moment, but only for a moment. His eyes took in the determination within her own before falling to her cheeks, still flushed and warm, then falling lower to her chest, heaving with her breath and barely covered by thin material that was almost but not quite sheer. His right hand twitched, his mind calmed just enough, and with a muffled groan, he grabbed her and kissed her with hunger that he couldn't stand to suppress this time. He could feel her relief in the way that she melted against him, winding her arms around his neck and humming in gratitude as he had his way with her mouth.

First he pushed her against the bathroom counter, then a wall, and briefly the door again before nothing seemed to be working the way that he wanted to. She was clawing at his shirt and her hair was tangled all around his hand after he had ripped her hair tie out and freed it, and yet he couldn't figure out where to put her.

Ever helpful, she used all of her weight to turn them around and press him to the door, and his eyes opened when he felt her hands go to his shoulders and push down. She stared back with heavy-lidded eyes that made his blood run a little hotter and helped persuade him to follow her lead, sinking down to the floor as she directed. She followed him down, and both of his hands took hold of her hips as she straddled his lap and took his face in her hands.

His lungs strained for a satisfying breath of air and it was getting harder to not lose his head, but her fingers gently tracing along his face as her eyes flickered through all of his features made a lump suddenly form in his throat. He didn't know why it was there, but it threatened to set his nerves on edge. Then she spoke, a smile playing on her swollen lips.

"I know I went on and on about Thor tonight, but... _God_, you are so much better."

He might have laughed if she hadn't then smashed her lips against his and ground herself against him at the same time, flatlining his thoughts and drawing a sound from his throat that she swallowed down. Then he was reaching for every inch of her that he could and she was successfully pulling his shirt over his head, and her mouth left his to acquaint itself with places it hadn't been before.

His left hand tangled in her hair while his right toyed with slipping into the back of her shorts while she kissed her way down and across his chest, sweetly at first and then progressively more open-mouthed and lustful, making him nearly shake with need that he still wasn't fully used to. When she slowed down unexpectedly, he opened eyes he hadn't meant to close and saw that her pause was due to reaching the thick scarring on his shoulder, where flesh met metal.

The first time she had touched him there, months ago, he had shifted away and recoiled at the contact. Now he simply watched her, unconsciously licking his lips when she glanced up him a little bit cautiously before lowering her head and pressing her lips softly to the marks.

He shivered a little, and he couldn't pretend to be fully comfortable with that particular part of him being kissed, but she did it with such gentleness and almost reverence that it only served to intensify everything else he was feeling. She kissed down the line of scars until it disappeared into smooth skin, and his hand in her hair drew her back up as he looked in her eyes and saw something that was nearly beyond his comprehension: pure, genuine acceptance. It was a lot to take in, for a man who was a long way away from accepting himself.

She looked to him a bit uneasily, probably for fear of overstepping or upsetting him, but he eased her fears by pulling her close and kissing her. It was a slower and different kiss from the others, less frantic and more feeling, more vulnerable than he was entirely okay with. But he needed it, and if he needed it, then surely she did as well.

As the kiss eventually grew more intense, his left hand grazed over her shoulder, pulling down the strap of her top while his other dragged the hem up her torso while it slipped beneath the fabric and moved upwards with a caution that Summer apparently detected. She pushed his hands off of her and pulled away from his lips, muttering something that sounded like "frozen and deprived for a million years" as she gripped the hem of the thing and pulled it over her head.

His mouth was suddenly dry and he stopped breathing for a moment, faced with the realization that what he'd been imagining was underneath her tops for at least the last week (but longer than that in reality) was far inferior to what was now before him. As he stared, and before he could make his limbs catch up with his brain and the blood rushing away from it as quickly as possible, she took his hands - left one included - and placed them over her breasts, then held them there as he managed to look up into her eyes for a moment.

She looked nervous, eyeing him a bit shakily as her hands slowly fell away, leaving his where they were. If it was some inexplicable insecurity that he was seeing in her eyes, he thought it best to see it gone, giving the soft, perfect skin under his hands a slow and firm squeeze as he leaned forward and drew her into another kiss before whispering against her lips, "Lie back."

* * *

><p>In hindsight, that might have been the point where she should have put on the brakes for a moment. After all, there was only so many different potential outcomes to the present situation with her underneath him, on the floor of a hotel bathroom, both of them topless and barreling headfirst towards something they'd both agreed to wait for only days earlier.<p>

But as it was, Summer was only human, and she was absolutely on fire.

The floor beneath her was cold but Bucky on top of her was almost blisteringly hot, the skin to skin contact scrambling her brain while he kissed her, every inch that he could reach, with such frantic passion that she could feel his desperation. It mirrored hers, and now she felt as if she could at last understand why people let passion ruin their lives - it was the most intoxicating thing she had ever felt, and completely worth the risks she'd taken. Her comfort zone was gone and she had been more than prepared for rejection, but he couldn't seem to tear his lips or his hands away from her.

With her legs wrapped around his waist and one hand in his hair while the other grasped at the smooth skin of his back, she tried to keep quiet as he rocked his hips into hers and made her pulse race with the attention that his lips and tongue lavished on her breasts. It was entirely too much, a shock to her system and a bucket of gasoline on an already-burning flame, and she was pretty sure that all those reasons for waiting were totally irrational. What were they again?

Then he was kissing her lips again, and moving against her with a shaky but determined urgency, his right hand roaming down her chest to her stomach and then the waistband of her shorts, and as they hooked into the thin fabric and started pulling, she bit his lip and tried to ignore the weird song playing in the background.

Then she paused. _Weird song?_

It was her phone, she suddenly realized, freezing up a bit as the familiar strain of Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" all but blared through the air from her phone that she had forgotten was plugged in to one of the bathroom outlets from when she'd been getting ready for bed.

Bucky hovered over her, his eyes pleading with her to ignore her brother's incoming call, and she pulled him down for a kiss, deciding to at least try to comply with his wishes. But, he didn't know how persistent her brother was, and in the middle of the third call, she gently pushed Bucky away and muttered breathless apologies over and over as she scrambled to her knees and crawled the short distance to the sink, grabbing blindly at the counter before finding her phone and putting it to her ear with a shaky hand.

"What the hell, Paul! Do you know how late it is?!"

"It's not that late here. And you were supposed to call me back two days ago. I was worried."

She rolled her eyes, suddenly feeling chilly without a firm, warm man on top of her. She glanced his way and saw him, sitting disheveled on the floor with his hair an absolute mess on top of his head, eyes dark and lips perfectly swollen as he stared at her with such heat that it threatened to make her whimper, which she could not do right now. "My gosh, Paul, I'm fine. Seriously. Now can I call you later?"

"Why so anxious to hang up? Are you with your ax murderer?"

Feeling suddenly weird talking to him in her current state, she spotted her discarded camisole nearby and dragged it closer with her foot, then dropped it over her chest, fully aware that she was being ridiculous. She glanced at Bucky again and saw that he wasn't happy with the move, either. She also noticed visual evidence that his jeans must have been extremely uncomfortable at the moment, then gulped and replied in a too-high pitched voice, "I just really need to hang up now."

"Oh, hell, Summer, I hope you're keeping your pants on. I mean, I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, but -"

"Yes my pants are on!" she half-exclaimed, face suddenly burning. Bucky's eyes widened a little bit in confusion and she covered her face with her hand. "I am so hanging up."

"Wait, wait, wait - seriously, are you okay?"

She almost screamed in frustration, then peeked past her hand and almost dropped her phone when she saw Bucky crawling towards her. There wasn't much space to cross, but the way that he looked at her while he did it made her nearly choke. "I... what?"

"Ugh, you are with him. You should put him on so I can threaten his life."

"Uh..." was all she could manage, dying a little inside when Bucky grasped one of her ankles and then slid his hand up her calf before pressing his lips to the inner side of her knee. She let her jaw drop a little as he trailed his mouth upwards, along the inside of her thigh, and when he peeked up at her in the process, she made some odd strangling noise that must have sounded extremely weird over the phone.

"Summer?"

Snapping out of it, she batted Bucky's head away and fought off giggles trying to bubble out of her throat. "What? I'm fine! I told you I'm fine."

"I'm not hanging up until I get a name. If this guy's defiling you I need to know whose name is going on the tombstone."

Undeterred by her efforts to push him off, Bucky shot her a lazy half-grin and refocused his efforts higher, kissing her stomach while tugging on the top she was still clutching to her chest. She tightened her grip on it and smiled at him, trying to twist away, but she was basically pinned against the cabinets under the sink, and she had nowhere to go.

"Nobody's defiling me, okay? And you know I can't tell you yet, so I don't know why you're even aaah...asking." She slapped a hand over her mouth, having just been bitten just above her hipbone, and she playfully swatted the back of Bucky's head for making her humiliate herself.

"Oh God. I'm hanging up. I don't want to know what you're doing. Use protection. Ugh."

Then, at long last, Paul hung up, and Summer let her phone clatter to the ground. "You evil son of a -"

Her curse was swallowed in a fast, deep kiss, but some of her brain had returned to her in the last few moments, and she managed to keep it from fleeing away when he drew back to stare at her in that completely brain-meltingly hungry way that made her heart fall out of her chest.

Keeping in mind that only a short time ago he would have just stared blankly at her and been slightly afraid to touch her anywhere, let alone places that were new to his eyes, she was about one step away from doing her best Bilbo Baggins impression and asking dramatically "_What have we done?_" because it appeared that some kind of sleeping dragon had indeed been fully awakened.

"Bucky," she said more breathily than intended as he pulled her on his lap and started sucking on her neck, just under her ear where she was most sensitive. She closed her eyes and clutched his shoulders. "Bucky... please, stop for a minute."

To his credit, he listened and stopped immediately, raising his head and again making her gulp with the way that he looked at her. She steeled herself and said, "Not that I don't want to do this, because I do, like, more than I want to breathe, but I don't think either of us really want it to happen on a bathroom floor. In a hotel."

His eyes shifted from dazed with hunger to slowly-dawning comprehension of her words, and he blinked a few times as he looked down between them and seemed to return to himself, at least on some level. She also noticed that her top was crumpled against the door across the room, and she had no idea when he'd snatched it from her, let alone thrown it there.

"Sorry."

Her eyes snapped to his, and she quickly replied, "Oh my God, don't apologize. Trust me, I want to. A lot. I think more than I ever had in my life. And I kind of hate myself for stopping you, but... I don't want to rush and screw things up, you know?"

He nodded, though she had the feeling that it was more of an automatic response than a sign of his actual thoughts.

Her physical frustration had reached painful levels, and if it was that bad for her, she shuddered to think how he felt at the moment. She opened her mouth, spontaneously deciding to point out that she could still offer him a helping hand, but then she panicked and closed her mouth. It had been a really long time, and if she was terrible, she would cry, jump off the hotel balcony, and never forgive herself.

As she cursed her cowardice and thought to herself that this, her ineptitude, was why she couldn't have nice things, Bucky spoke and interrupted her spiraling thoughts.

"It would be easier to wait if you weren't..."

Her eyes widened a little bit, swallowing reflexively, hanging on his words and hoping against hope that the next ones wouldn't be something negative.

Brows furrowed softly, he slowly let his eyes roam over her, reminding her of how little she was still wearing, and a few moments passed where he searched silently for the right word. She held her breath until he said just above a murmur, "... Perfect."

First, her heart thudded erratically against her chest, and then she was pretty sure that she'd heard him wrong. But then it sunk in that she had not, and the way that he said it was with such a lack of agenda and really just a sort of innocence that she thought only he was truly capable of.

As complex and complicated as he was, on some levels, he was also incredibly simple. She couldn't doubt his sincerity, especially not when he raised his eyes to hers and she felt something inside of her break a little.

So naturally, she inadvertently tried to ruin the moment. "If you think I'm perfect, that's just proof that you need to date around some."

He looked at her, glancing down at her chest like he had been about every five seconds, still as subtle as a horse, and then he met her eyes again before replying, "Wouldn't change anything."

"You say that now," she babbled. "But then you'd meet someone actually confident and... girly, and experienced and... seductive. Basically Natasha without the scariness. Then you'd see how ridiculous I actually am. I mean, I can't even -"

He shushed her with two long fingers against her lips, and he might have been on the verge of a slight smile, but it was hard to tell. Then the fingers slid beneath her chin, tipping her head back, and she closed her eyes as his lips brushed hers. Sometimes she was pretty sure that half of her problem was just talking too much.

The next few moments were a bit hazy, a mix of arms and lips and slow movements, marked by a mutual reluctance to let the moment end. But, it did end when Bucky unexpectedly drew away to grab her top, then returned to help pull it back over her head. His hands lingered after the top was back on, and every brush of his fingers and look he gave her was nothing short of torture.

But, soon enough, he was standing and helping her to her feet, and in comfortable silence, they made their way to the bathroom door. Bucky threw his shirt back on as she opened stepped back out to the main room, and then it was a silent walk back to bed. As if she had a single hope of sleeping after all of that.

She crawled into bed first, then watched as he followed, taking up the position she had gotten him in the habit of in the last few nights. But, tonight, she thought that a change was in order, despite how fond she'd grown of falling asleep on his chest.

"Let's switch." When he looked at her quizzically, she shrugged and laid down next to him, head propped on a few pillows, then motioned for him to come and lay at her side. He stared at her for a few seconds before making his awkward way there.

She hid a smile at the unsure way that he lowered himself down and paused, trying to figure out how to even mildly comfortably do what she was asking, but she guided him with a hand on his shoulder to lay his head on her chest, and he followed her lead. Then he struggled next with what to do with his metal hand, since he was laying on his right side and he needed to put it somewhere, and she almost rolled her eyes as she took it and then wrapped his arm over her waist. It did feel a bit like snuggling with a very large, limb-shaped, expensive toaster, but it was a part of him. And she really thought that he should have gotten the message that she was perfectly fine with it after she'd made him grope her with it. Which had been a very cold but pleasurable experience.

She ran her fingers soothingly through his hair, helping him to relax against her and trying to memorize how he felt when they were this close. Looking up at the ceiling, she released a sigh and said quietly, "I wish you would fall asleep with me."

"I can't," was his slightly feeble reply.

"I know. But it would be nice." As she let her fingers continue to play with his soft, inviting strands, she added, "I can't imagine how exhausted you are. Please try to sleep tomorrow night."

He remained silent, his breath a light tickle on skin that wasn't covered by her tank. "Is it the nightmares? Could you sleep if you didn't have them?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

Still wide awake and still keeping her eyes on the ceiling, Summer next said, "You know that all I know about you is what I read online when you first came to my house. I only looked to figure out who you were and what happened to you. After that I've avoided reading anything else because I wanted to hear it from you, not the Internet." When he said nothing, she added, "I'm not asking you to give me details or say anything you don't want to. I guess I just want to understand better."

Silence stretched for so long after she spoke that she was sure that she had said something wrong. But then, to her relief, he finally spoke.

"I can barely remember the... before I fell. There's bits and pieces but they don't really fit most of the time."

She blinked slowly, then asked, "What about after? Is it easier to remember?"

"Yes."

Then she furrowed her brows, contemplating something she had wondered about quite a bit in the past. "Did they take your memory... a lot? Was it just once?"

Another few moments of silence, and then Bucky replied, "It happened after every mission."

_Every_ mission... over the course of at least five decades?

She swallowed and then asked quietly, "How?"

She could feel the tension growing in his body as he spoke, but the fact that he was speaking and opening up at all had to be a good thing.

"... A chair."

She braced herself for what he would say next, the two simple words sending a chill down her spine.

They spoke well into the middle of the night, conversing on a level that they never had before, and for the first time, Summer got a clear picture of why and how Bucky had come to be what he was. Some of it made her stomach churn and her heart hurt, but whatever discomfort it caused her had to cause at least tenfold within the man telling her. And that made every word he spoke, as wrenching as they were, all the more special, because of how much trust she knew that it took on his part to share them with her at all.

And when she did finally fall asleep, it was in his arms, for the last time in the foreseeable future.

**A/N: *clears throat* So... dat frustration, right? And it's not over yet. *evil laughter* Anyway, my usual thanks to you wonderful readers, followers, reviewers, I love you all and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to read these gigantor chapters. I do have something slightly unusual to mention here today, and I really didn't want to, but I decided that it was best to go ahead and tell you guys about a guest "review" I got and subsequently deleted this last week. If you read Breath of Life, then you may know the slight bit of drama that occurred with a number of anon reviews posted by someone claiming that I'd stolen a story idea from someone else, that I needed to delete the story, blah blah, which of course was not true. I started moderating my anon reviews, and the same anon reviewer went on to try to post many more reviews where they claimed to be outraged and offended that Summer's grandmother is depicted as a Holocaust survivor (apparently that's offensive?), that there are tons of authors on this site that I've ripped off who are reporting me, that I need to delete all my work, blah blah blah, y'all get the point. This has continued on with this current story, and now this same "reviewer" has taken to posing as an admin in the hopes of scaring me away (which is hilarious). Here is what they submitted this week, completely unedited:**

**"Attention:Team Damon,**

**It has been reported that you have threatened authors and used their ideas for your own published work without their permission, resulting in willful dishonest behavior on this site and to the loyalty of your readers.**

**Conveying with other authors on this site and using their ideas is a form of misconduct for which you are making yourself a threat to any new authors. This is allowed on FF. Also, reports of you incorporating real life history has been issued. The Holocaust must be respected in all forms and with no involvement in fictional stories.**

**You are hereby warned to refrain from publishing work on this site, failure to do so shall evoke appropriate action.**

**You are further advised to remove all work without explanation. Removing this memo will display that you are dishonest to your readers and followers."**

**Why am I posting this? Well, besides to prove my lack of dishonesty and give you guys a good laugh, I'm doing it to go a step further for this person and make sure all of you see what they have to say, not just those of you who might take a look at the reviews page. First of all, I haven't copied anyone, and that should be abundantly clear by now, this far into the story. Secondly, there are no rules on this site stating that real life history can't be incorporated into stories. If that was the case, I wouldn't be able to mention Bucky or Steve's involvement with WWII in any capacity, since that was a real life event. And anyway, Summer's grandmother in this story serves as an example of strength and perseverance, partially through her status as a Holocaust survivor. It's not showing the event or the people it affected any disrespect, which is something I would never do, because I am not an evil, soulless person. I ain't Hydra. Thirdly, the fact that this person is now trying to fool me into thinking that an admin would leave an anonymously signed review to discuss problems with my work is frankly insulting to my intelligence. Yes, I have had to edit my work before due to copyright issues regarding use of song lyrics and lines from movie dialogue used in flashback scenes of some of my stories. And the folks that I dealt with on that issue, from a sort of watchdog community on FF that reports to admins on the subject of copyright infringement, were lovely, fair people, and it ended up being a positive experience. My case thread is still posted in their comm, btw, if anyone wants the link, message me and I'll send it. I'm not hiding anything over here. I have never, ever, stolen ideas from anyone. I posted song lyrics at times and quoted movies. Very different things. Both against the rules, as I found out, but nonetheless very different.**

**So, I pose a question to you (actual) readers and reviewers - if you all would prefer that I do not continue to censor this troll's comments for the sake of full disclosure, then I will not, and I'll stop moderating the reviews. I'm fine with that. I defer to your guys' wishes. Honestly, I hate giving this person a shred of attention, but I decided that enough was enough with this last one. I'm just here to vent my fandom feels, seriously. It's just fanfiction. It's supposed to be fun. People like this suck the fun out of it. Or they try to, anyway.**

**So let me know what you guys think, and thank you for sticking with me and following this story. Some of you have been following me for a long time, across several fandoms, and I am incredibly grateful for that. I'll see you guys in a week with another chapter :D And lest I forget, my equally huge and sincere thanks to midnightwings96 for being totally awesome and incredibly helpful and just the best. See you guys in a week :D (sorry for the rambling lol)**


	5. Chapter 5

Summer awoke the next morning to the jarring sound of her phone alarm, ringing loudly from the table next to the bed and making her curse having stayed up so late the night before.

Alone in the bed, she half-fell out of it trying to grab the phone to make the horrible noise stop. Once she was finally successful, she let the phone drop to the bed and sat up, blinking heavily and rubbing at her eyes, while next to her in the other bed, her son did exactly the same thing, mirroring her perfectly.

As her brain slowly came back online, she registered the sound of the shower running in the bathroom, and then tried to piece together exactly why she felt like she'd only slept for maybe three hours at the most. It didn't take her long, and her eyes widened a little bit as the memories came flooding back - major half-naked making out on the bathroom floor, followed by a conversation that the word "heartbreaking" didn't do service to.

It was weird to want to blush and kind of want to cry at the same time. And way too early for either one.

Eventually, she dragged herself out of bed and started checking everything she'd repacked the day before, double checking that it was all where it was supposed to be. She was so wrapped up in trying to competently make sure that they were ready for the return trip home that she didn't hear Bucky emerge from the bathroom, didn't hear his admittedly silent footsteps behind her, and therefore almost jumped in surprise when a set of warm fingertips brushed her side and then slid across her lower back before disappearing. She looked up to see him walk past her, giving her a look that was altogether far too potent for seven in the morning, and she swallowed against her suddenly dry throat before turning back to her suitcase and trying to remember what she had been doing.

Oh, right. Going home and putting way too many miles between herself and the man who had sprung to life a whole family of butterflies in her belly with that one covert touch.

The last seven days had passed far too quickly and made too many things seem... deeper.

But, the morning left her little time to think much on those thoughts, and by the time she got herself and David dressed and ready, she realized that they were indeed missing a rather important item from their inventory.

"Tablet, tablet, tablet," she muttered to herself, zipping around the room looking for the thing that was instrumental in keeping David calm on a plane, but succeeding in only finding the charging cord. Then she stood in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, brows furrowed and thinking as both David and Bucky watched her with similarly blank expressions.

"Crap... where could it be? When was the last time he had it?" she half-whispered to herself, fully aware that she probably looked weird. Then her eyes lit up and she swung around. "Oh! Your apartment! We left it there!"

Bucky nodded, then stood up and grabbed her suitcase off of her bed. "Then let's go get it."

She nodded and grabbed her purse, figuring she'd catch a cab to the airport from Steve's place, and after one last sweep of the room, the three of them hustled out of there and on to the street.

As they walked down the street, Bucky carrying her luggage like any good gentleman from an era long passed, Summer held David close to her side by his hand and started to notice the protective way in which Bucky walked beside them. He stayed just slightly ahead of them, to her left side so that his left arm faced the world around them, and though his checks were subtle, she could see him constantly looking forward, backward, and all around, like he was waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows and try to take them down. Now that she thought of it, it was how he always walked with them.

Silently, she let her free hand fall away from holding her purse to her shoulder and let it find Bucky's right one. In light of his handy holographic cover being destroyed, he now wore a pair of black leather gloves whenever he was in public, so the cool material was what she felt on her skin as she laced her fingers with his and smiled as he looked down at her. He didn't smile back, but there was something in his eyes that made her think that he was liking her a whole lot more than she honestly ever thought he would. It was almost softness, something that one did not often catch a glimpse of in his often-chaotic eyes.

Their hands parted when they arrived at the apartment, which Bucky unlocked and then led them through. Then there was a loud crashing sound from the kitchen, and suddenly, for one very brief moment, everything moved very quickly.

At the sound, Bucky instantly threw Summer behind him with his left arm and seemed to tense in preparation for battle. Since the kitchen was right at the front of the unit, Summer could peer into it from behind Bucky's rather imposing figure, and after instinctively shielding David by covering his ears and holding him in a tight hug to her chest, she took a quick look. And what she saw was Steve Rogers, glancing their way with a horrified look on his face before quickly turning his back to them and furiously fumbling with... something. As she wondered what in the world was happening, Natasha's head materialized from right in front of where he'd been standing as she apparently rose up from the floor, and she was smiling and possibly discreetly swiping a finger against her lips, and suddenly Summer realized what they'd walked in on.

"Oh, sweet mother of... _nope_, no, not happening," she groaned to herself, turning around to hide her own embarrassment and shield David while Bucky relaxed but stared at the scene with an expression that gave away how utterly unimpressed he was. Natasha simply smiled at the intruders and casually leaned back against the counter while Steve finally turned around, which was also when Summer begrudgingly tried to turn back around herself.

"Hi!" Steve chirped, voice entirely too high and his smile entirely too wide. His face was also roughly the color of a strawberry, giving even Summer on her worst blushing day a run for her money. "I didn't think you guys would be here this early!"

"Obviously," Natasha added, smiling more when Steve winced a little at her interjection.

Summer smiled weakly at him, truly feeling his embarrassment, then glanced at Bucky, who looked a little confused at it all, but not because he misunderstood, since that was pretty much impossible. Desperate to put an end to the awkwardness, Summer matched Steve's high pitch and said, "Well, uh, I accidentally left David's tablet here yesterday, and -"

"Oh, right!" Steve half-exclaimed, still hilariously jumpy, opening one of the kitchen drawers and producing the thing. "Here. I found it last night and forgot about it, sorry."

He stepped forward to hand it to her, and she took it with a nod. "Oh it's fine, I understand. You're... busy." She cringed, then covered it up with a smile. "Thanks."

He smiled back. "No problem. So your flight leaves soon, right?"

She nodded, and a few minutes of desperate small talk ensued, where Steve tried to act as normal as possible and she tried to assure him through the pointless talk that nothing was weird at all. Bucky watched them go back and forth with an expression that said he thought they were both insane, between occasional, mildly loathsome glances at Natasha. In the midst of it all, the innocent and oblivious David simply stared and smiled up at his hero.

After the forced conversation was over, Steve excused himself for a moment, disappearing into the hallway of the now-completely furniture-free apartment. Summer shifted on her feet a bit, glancing up involuntarily at Natasha after a moment. The redhead gestured to a brown paper bag on the counter and asked, "Had breakfast yet?"

Summer opened her mouth to answer, but Bucky beat her to it, replying with something that was clearly in Russian. Then Natasha smirked and answered him in the same language, and Summer was utterly lost, looking between the two and feeling too American for her own good. But, if she had ever randomly pursued a career as a Russian interpreter, she would have known that Bucky's comment had been "_Clearly you have_," and that Natasha had shot back with "_Jealous?_".

Bucky made a face of distaste at Natasha and then turned away from her. Summer looked at the other woman in lingering confusion, and she simply smiled and gestured to the bag. "Muffins."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks," Summer nodded, pretty sure that the secret Russian conversation hadn't involved bakery items, but whatever. She'd always be a little clueless around these people, she had come to accept.

Thankfully, the odd get-together ended soon, with Steve re-emerging with a hat and jacket on, suggesting they all get her downstairs and into a cab before she missed her flight. She expected Natasha to stay behind, for some reason, but everybody tagged along out the door, and Summer felt the Twilight Zone feeling creeping back up on her.

Down on the street, Steve hailed a cab, then quickly began the process of telling David goodbye. Summer couldn't help but smile as she watched her son get to live out the ultimate childhood fanboy dream, and Steve was so genuine that she knew he didn't think it a burden or something he had to just endure. He seemed to have really grown a soft spot for her kid.

Bucky stood at her side, as always, and loaded her luggage into the trunk of the cab for her. Natasha was quiet, keeping an eye on things behind Steve, and after Steve finished hugging David goodbye, he straightened up and then immediately spotted a small group of kids staring at him from across the street. Summer followed his gaze, saw the kids and how they recognized him despite his brilliant hat disguise, and when she turned back around, Bucky and Natasha had vanished, seemingly into thin air.

She blinked in confusion, but then Steve was giving her a look that said "bear with me" just before he was promptly mauled by the kids.

Right. World's first superhero and major celebrity and all that.

She tried to slunk off a bit herself, and after Steve had graciously took pictures with the kids and signed all their stuff before sending them on their way, he turned back to her and shrugged. "Part of the job."

She smiled and nodded. "Yeah. It's easy to forget how huge you are now that I actually kinda know you."

"I take that as a compliment," he grinned.

"You should. I always used to wonder if you were really a jerk in real life," she rambled slightly, "and now I definitely know you aren't."

He laughed. "Glad I laid that idea to rest. Thanks again for coming out. I know traveling isn't easy for you."

"Thanks for making it happen at all," she replied. "I really do want to pay you back still."

He shook his head. "Nope."

She sighed, then was slightly surprised when he drew her in for a hug. Now she could say that Thor liked her cake and that Captain America had hugged her. Life was becoming ridiculous on a bizarrely awesome level.

Then something popped into her head just before the hug ended. "Can you try to make sure he starts sleeping?"

Steve drew away then, nodding to her. "Yeah. Don't worry about it. That's why I'm here."

She almost frowned at those simple words for how innocently profound they were. Bucky could literally be in no better hands.

It was then that she realized that both Bucky and Natasha had reappeared from whatever shadows they had been hiding in, and Steve took that as his cue to leave. "Well, have a safe flight. You've got my number if you ever need anything."

Summer nodded. "All right. Thanks again."

Steve smiled at her, giving David one last goodbye, and then he started heading back up to his empty apartment. Natasha followed him, though she gave Summer a look that was almost a fraction of a smile before saying, "See you around."

Summer suddenly remembered something. "Oh, your hair clip - do you want it back?"

Natasha shrugged from over her shoulder. "Nah. Keep it."

Summer nodded, glad that she didn't have to dig through her admittedly scary purse for it. Then she realized that only one person was left to say goodbye to.

She looked at Bucky, then David, then the waiting taxi, and suddenly it seemed a lot colder outside. She was at a loss for a moment, but then she gained some clarity and put a hand on David's little shoulder. "Time to tell Bucky goodbye, kiddo."

She thought it was funny that Bucky still appeared to panic a little wherever it came to either greeting or departing the boy. He looked at her in slight alarm, and she mouthed _hug him_ with a small smile. He'd get the hang of having a little boy admirer one of these days, or at least she hoped that he would.

The hug was quick and sufficiently stiff, though not as much as previous ones, and she might have died a little when Bucky returned David's parting smile. Then she loaded David into the taxi, tossed her purse inside as well, and turned back around to face Bucky, feeling slightly nervous.

It only took one look in his eyes for it to hit her how much she really, really, did not want to say goodbye. It was like a rush of ice-cold water down her spine, and she genuinely shivered a little bit before sighing and trying to come up with something to say.

She settled on something that popped into her head at the last minute, while they'd been staring at each other in silence. Smiling uneasily, she said, "So. Since I'm leaving and all, how about a translation of that French stuff?"

His lips quirked up in a fleeting smile. "No."

She slouched her shoulders and rolled her eyes. "You're killing me here." When he didn't reply to that, opting instead to simply stare at her as if doing so would prolong her stay, she took a deep breath and reached out, pulling him into a tight hug.

Unlike some of their earliest embraces, there was no hesitation on his part to wrap his arms around her in turn. She closed her eyes at the comfort of the moment, feeling him breathe in the scent of her hair, wondering if she should have left him a bottle of her shampoo since he seemed to like it so much. Or maybe that would have been weird. Then again, last time they'd parted, she chopped off a piece of her hair and gave it to him, and that was probably weirder.

She would miss waking up every day knowing that she would get to see him. She would miss falling asleep on his chest, with the sounds of his arm whirring and clicking in one ear while his heartbeat thumped in her other. She could only hear the mechanical noises when the night was at its most quiet, as they were soft and easy to drown out, and it had become almost an almost lulling thing. Those sounds were soundtrack she couldn't hope to replicate at home without him.

He eased her hair back with one leather-covered hand and let his lips brush over her ear, and as her skin prickled in response, something occurred to her. Duh, she would miss him. That was obvious. She'd been missing him for nearly four months and now she was in for who knows how much longer of missing him. But was it wrong to want him to miss her just as much?

Drawing back a bit from their embrace, Summer looked up into his eyes and then down at his lips before placing one hand on his face and using the other to grip the collar of his jacket. Then she kissed him in a way that she hoped would leave a lasting impression. They had spent enough time in the last week doing this for her to know what he liked, what made noises pull from his throat, and what made his fingers tighten on her hips. A light, tingling scratch of her nails on the back of his neck, a firm swipe of her tongue against his, a little push of her hips into his, and he would groan in a way that made her want to slam her head into a wall. In a good way. And this time was no exception.

The taxi driver yelled just as they were on the verge of getting carried away, and Summer pulled away first, smiling at the interruption and feeling her breath leave her at the way Bucky was looking down at her. She kissed him again, more quickly this time, and murmured, "I'm gonna miss you even more this time."

He looked a bit pained when she said this, so she quickly added, "I want you to text me. A lot. I don't care what about. You can tell me what you had for breakfast for all I care. I just want to hear from you, okay?" He nodded. "And I want you to try to sleep. You can't live off of two hours every night forever. Eventually you'll just... shut down, or lose it, or..."

He kissed her, ending her sentence, and then brushed his lips against her ear again before murmuring quietly, "Stay safe."

She nodded. "I will "

"I mean it."

She looked up then, seeing the resolve behind his words, and she nodded again. "Okay."

Then he kissed her again, and the cabbie yelled again. She smiled and broke away. "I'm gonna miss my flight."

He nodded, but he didn't let her go, and she didn't want him to. She embraced him one more time, and just before she could tear herself away from his arms, his lips brushed hers in a soft, gentle kiss, and as it sent flutters through her middle, she knew it was the kiss she wanted to end the week with.

Her forehead gently leaning against his, she looked up at him and half-whispered another goodbye. He nodded, his jaw tight, and finally, he let her go. As she stepped backwards towards the car, she smiled and said, "I'm serious about the texting thing."

He didn't answer, instead shoving his hands inside his pockets as he watched her slide into the cab. All too soon, she had shut the door, and after she locked her seatbelt into place, she met his gaze once more, through the window. This time, it physically hurt put distance back between them. His eyes didn't leave hers until the cranky driver hit the gas and got them on the road.

After he had disappeared from her sight, she sighed and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. As much as she had prepared for it, walking away from him had ended up being a heck of a lot harder than watching him walk away from her.

The sound of sniffling pulled her out of her thoughts. She looked at her side and saw David's shoulders trembling slightly as he stared at the tablet in his hands, and her eyes widened as she automatically reached an arm around him. "Hey, what's wrong?"

He snuggled into her side, crying softly, and she could only assume that he was sad to be going home following his dream week. Hoping it wouldn't turn into a full-fledged meltdown, she held him close and soothed him in her best comforting mom-voice, watching the city pass them by and wondering, for just the shortest of moments, if maybe she really could consider coming here to live.

But the thought was short-lived. David's crying stopped before they reached the airport, and she supposed that it was the start to everything officially going back to normal.

And she had a bad feeling that normal wouldn't quite cut it anymore.

* * *

><p>Bucky watched the cab disappear among identical vehicles as they cruised down the street, staring at the point where it had vanished until a sleek, long, black car slid to a smooth halt directly in front of where he was standing.<p>

His attention snapped to the car, eyeing it suspiciously, until a hand lightly clapped his shoulder from behind. He turned to find Steve gesturing to the car. "Ready?"

Bucky nodded, taking a step back and waiting for Steve and Natasha to enter the vehicle first. She took the front seat, Steve took the back, and then Bucky sat next to him, closing the door and crossing his arms as the car started back up. He stared at the driver, some nondescript guy in a suit, and he found that he was not fond of being driven in a car by a stranger, regardless of if he knew who had sent the man or not.

"So, to warn you," Steve began as the car began its trek through the city, "Stark has this... artificial intelligence. It runs the tower, and it talks constantly and knows who everybody is, asks you questions, anything you can imagine. Nobody warned me my first time there, so I kind of... got scared the first time I heard it."

"Which was classic," Natasha added from the front seat.

"I'm sure," Steve rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I'm just giving you a heads up."

Bucky nodded, more concerned with other thoughts like if if was really a good idea to be living in a tower owned by a man whose parents he had personally murdered years ago. He understood that logically, as Steve had explained days earlier, the tower was the most secure building in the city, an ideal place for them to live and use as a base during the hunt for HYDRA, but that didn't help Bucky understand why Stark would allow him to stay there in the first place. He had never even met the man, but surely Stark knew what Bucky had done.

"You know," Steve added, "if she came around to the idea, I could ask Stark for a favor and see if he could get Summer a job. He's got tons of employees, and I'm sure he could find her something. Then she could move here. If she wanted to."

Bucky side-glanced at him, and before he could reply, Natasha sighed and asked, "Really, Steve?"

"What?" he asked with a shrug.

"You might want to stop and think first before you put a single mother and her little boy directly in the middle of all of this."

"It would be her decision. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything," Steve replied.

"All I'm saying is that she might be better off where she is."

Bucky glanced at Steve, wishing that the woman in the front seat would just go away with her inconvenient truths and willingness to speak them.

It was awhile before Bucky spoke, but eventually, he did. "She isn't safe there."

"She's safer there than she would be here," Natasha replied.

Steve sighed, interjecting, "Look, in the end, it's up to her. I've still got her house being watched. HYDRA's not gonna get to her."

Bucky wished he could believe that, but unfortunately, he found it hard to believe that anyone - himself included - was truly safe from HYDRA. But before he could express that, everything suddenly got rather dark, and he realized that they'd driven underground.

He tensed with an immediate sense of claustrophobia and unease, which Steve noticed. "It's all right. We're going in from under. It's the least conspicuous way in."

They drove through a tiny tunnel that led to another one, then another one, and eventually opened to an equally tiny clearing that contained only a lone set of metal doors. Still feeling distinctly on edge, Bucky's eyes swept over the dark cavern as the others filed out of the car, lingering behind them as they all walked to the doors, which apparently housed an elevator.

He was about one second from jumping back into the car and hightailing it out of there when the doors opened with a ding and a mechanic, distinctly British, voice sounded from within. "Welcome back Captain Rogers, Ms. Romanoff."

Bucky's eyes widened a little, but having been prepared for it, his mostly boring reaction to the AI left Natasha a bit disappointed that he hadn't jumped and yelped the way that Steve had his first time hearing it.

"JARVIS," Steve replied, returning the disembodied voice's greeting as he stepped into the elevator. Natasha followed, then the driver, and once Bucky got inside, the doors closed and the smooth ride up began.

"Good morning, Sergeant Barnes. My name is JARVIS and I will assist you in any way that I can during your stay here at Stark Tower."

Bucky looked up at the elevator roof narrowing his eyes slightly as Natasha grinned next to him. "Is it... an electronic butler, or..."

"Not exactly, sir. I run the security and communications within the building, and I have many other functions that I do not have time to list during this elevator ride."

At his lingering confused expression, Steve nudged Bucky and said, "In other words, he can't bring you a drink, but he'll tell you where to go find one."

"Essentially correct, Captain."

Masking how bizarre he thought it was, Bucky nodded and kept his features as blank as possible. A slight glance to his left alerted him to the driver watching him from the corner of his eye. He then turned his head fully towards the man and stared at him, almost enjoying the way the driver tensed just enough to be noticeable and swallowed nervously.

Then the doors dinged open, and before them was a sprawling, open room, filled with very modern couches and chairs and a paper-thin television the size of a theater screen. The walls were nearly all made of windows, and all at once, it felt too open and too closed. It was as strange as the robotic voice currently explaining to them that this was the floor that Tony Stark had ordered to be prepared for Steve and himself.

He followed Steve out of the elevator, stepping out on to the smooth flooring and looking to his right, seeing a rather large kitchen area there, all stainless steel and marble counters and weird gadgets whose functions he was clueless of. Ahead, on either side of the room, were two hallways, which presumably led to bedrooms that would probably be equally as weird as this room.

He ended up wandering to the windows, stopping just short of them and staring out at the city laid out before his eyes. It was so enormous, so huge, so different from what little could remember of it, just like everything else. It was one thing seeing it from the window of the apartment he'd just left and quite another to see it like this. But, something from somewhere inside his head told him that this was not the first time he was seeing the city like this, that he had seen it in its current state before, also from a high vantage point, but he actively tried to repress the burgeoning memory. Whatever it was, wherever it was from, he didn't want it.

Then there was the sound of the elevator dinging again, and an energetic, unfamiliar male voice filled his ears.

"Ah, Capsicle! You made it! Hey, Red. Didn't know you were tagging along."

"I'm not staying. Not yet anyway."

"Bummer. So, how come nobody called me during that mess in D.C.? Everybody forget about me? I could have helped."

Bucky tensed slightly as he listened to the conversations carrying on behind him, but he kept his eyes on the city.

"Well, no offense," Steve answered, "but I didn't know who to trust. It was a... rough week."

"Well, no HYDRA here. Not anymore, anyway. Found out I had a few rats on the payroll here, but the FBI's got 'em now. Did JARVIS give you the grand tour yet? Where's... oh. There he is."

Since the room had suddenly gone dead silent and Bucky could feel three pairs of eyes on him, he finally turned around. When his eyes landed on Tony Stark, his blood ran cold. It was like staring at a ghost, one that he was personally responsible for, and not one that he had any interest in facing.

For his part, Tony didn't seem any more fond of the moment. His previously jovial expression fell instantly into a blank, mildly vacant stare. It wasn't hostile or hateful, simply empty, and Steve was glancing back and forth nervously between the two men.

"Remember, Stark," Natasha said, breaking the silence, "it's no different from what happened to Barton."

If Bucky had known who and what she was referring to, he would have known that she was, in her own way, sticking up for him, but as he didn't, the words went over his head.

"Yeah," Tony said, his stare unbroken. "Except Clint didn't kill my parents."

In some bizarre, nonsensical way, Bucky was almost relieved at the words being said out loud. Nothing was worse than being tiptoed around. Clearly, Stark wasn't one to tiptoe.

Finally, Tony exhaled and looked away, raking a hand through his hair. "Well. Now I need a drink. Anyone else want one?"

"It's... nine in the morning," Steve pointed out.

"Perfect time for orphans housing their parents' brainwashed killer to drink," Tony replied, heading for the elevator. "JARVIS, give them the tour."

And then, as soon as he'd come, he was gone. Steve let out a sigh, and Natasha shrugged. "That went well, considering," she said.

"Who's Barton?" Bucky asked, trying to process the last few moments.

"Clint Barton's an agent who was brainwashed into fighting against us during the invasion of New York a few years ago," Natasha replied. "And a friend."

When Bucky seemed to want to ask more but didn't, Steve supplied, "He's better now. But it took him time."

Bucky nodded, knowing that Steve was trying to be helpful, and that even Natasha was. While one part of him was grateful, another part simply wanted, needed, to be alone now.

The strange British robot voice seemed to sense this. "Shall I begin the tour?"

Bucky's room ended up being way too large and way too open, one wall being made entirely of window, similar to the common room. He felt on edge the minute he walked into the room. What few belongings he had were in boxes, sitting innocently on the floor and waiting to be unpacked, all but swallowed up in the room's vastness.

Summer's home was relatively small, and Steve's apartment had been almost tiny. This one room was bigger than the entire apartment, and he stood there in the middle of it, scowling about this fact for longer than he cared to quantify. He supposed that he was used to living in small spaces. Since he'd lived in a cryo chamber for most of the last seventy years.

His breathing picking up a bit, he sat down on the edge of the bed - which was also huge - and closed his eyes, trying to recall what Dr. Connor said to do when he started feeling like this. _Breathe_. Focus on one thing at a time. Let the moment pass. Everything passes. Remain in control.

And that was how Steve found him, sitting uncomfortably straight on the edge of the bed, eyes closed and brows furrowed as he breathed in and breathed out. He tried to back away and make a silent exit, but Bucky had heard him approach before he'd even peeked inside the room.

"What?"

Steve stilled halfway out the door, eyes widening slightly in surprise. "Oh. Sorry. I uh... are you okay?"

How he was starting to loathe that question. Of course he wasn't, and who knew when he would be? "The room's too big."

Steve looked around and then inclined his head. "Yeah, it's pretty big. I can see if there's a smaller one we can move you into, or -"

"The very last room at the end of this hallway is approximately half the size of this one, sir," JARVIS helpfully supplied from overhead.

Steve smiled. "Well then. Want to go?"

Bucky nodded and stood, then frowned at the ceiling and asked, "Is there a way to turn that thing off?"

"Only Mr. Stark can turn me off, Sergeant, but if you would prefer, I can adhere to the 'speak when spoken to' protocol in your room."

"Yeah. Do that," Bucky said, looking around, trying to pinpoint where exactly the thing's speakers were.

"Certainly, sir."

"And don't call me Sergeant."

"Would Mr. Barnes be more to your liking?"

"... I guess."

The room at the end of the hallway ended up being much better than the first one, and he didn't have to fight to breathe normally within it. By the time that he was settled in and alone once more, he found himself sitting on the edge of another bed, a slightly smaller one, and as he wondered exactly what would happened now, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. His gloves, which he hadn't thought to take off yet, got slightly in the way as he reached for it, so he discarded them first before pulling the phone free and looking at the screen.

_Landed safely. Miss me yet?_

He stared at the text, panicking a little bit at the prospect of having to send something back. But, this was apparently how he was going to keep in touch with her, and he was going to have to figure it out.

What would he say if she were in front of him, asking him this question? He thought for a moment, then realized he wouldn't say anything at all. He would grab her and kiss her. And that was not helpful to his current predicament.

After staring blankly at his phone for an embarrassingly long time, he eventually managed to type out a single underwhelming word in response with his one hand that the touchscreen would cooperate with. _Yes_.

He immediately winced after he sent it. Even for an out of touch ex-assassin who had never texted before, he knew it was a terrible reply, but words weren't exactly his strong suit. This may end up being harder than he originally anticipated.

Then she replied, with one word of her own - _Good_. Then he squinted, examining the text more closely. Was that... a tiny yellow face blowing a kiss?

Then the phone buzzed again. _I miss you too_. After that, his eyes darted back to the little kissy face symbol, and as he continued to analyze it, a small smile bloomed across his lips.

She was ridiculous. And he really did miss her already.

* * *

><p>A day later, across the country in California, a pale, red-haired doctor named Paul McAdams was trying his best to pry his two-year-old twin girls from his legs so that he could successfully escape his zoo of a house for a 24 hour shift at the city hospital. They giggled and only held on tighter the more he protested, taking ridiculously slow steps across his bedroom floor, looking at his wife sitting in front of her laptop and pleading, "Sarah! Help! These little boogers won't let go!"<p>

"Welcome to my world," she replied with disinterest, scrolling through what he could see was some celebrity gossip site or another. "Ew. I can't believe I ever had a crush on John Travolta."

Paul rolled his eyes, trying to shake one girl off his legs and succeeding only in making her and her twin laugh all the more. "Who cares about John Travolta? Well, guess I'm just gonna have to stick these kids in a backpack and take them with me around all those sick, sneezing, coughing people..."

"Uh huh, sure."

Sighing again, Paul rolled his eyes and looked down at the girls. "I'll bring home candy tomorrow if you guys let go."

Immediately, the little girls released their death grips on his legs and reached up to give him hugs goodbye. After smushing them to death with hugs and kisses, he hurried across the room to kiss his wife goodbye.

"Why can't Captain America turn up here in Cali?" Sarah mused as he kissed her on the cheek, glancing at her laptop screen. There was a set of photos with headlines exclaiming that Cap was spotted in NYC the previous morning, and that it appeared that he'd found himself a girlfriend.

"Aw, Cap found a girl," Paul said, watching her scroll down. "You know they say that he's a... 95 year old... vir-... what the _hell_?!"

"What?"

Suddenly, Paul's hand sprang forward and batted hers away from the touchpad, then frantically scrolled up on a picture Sarah had just passed. It was a picture of the superhero signing stuff for fans, one clearly taken by one of the fans due to how close the photo was, and behind the Captain was a woman and a little boy. The image was a bit blurry, but the two figures were extremely familiar.

Stabbing at the left button, he quickly scrolled down to the picture of the woman hugging him, which was a much clearer picture, and his jaw dropped upon further inspection.

Sarah leaned in closer to the screen and widened her eyes. "That looks like... is that... your _sister_?"

He couldn't reply, because his jaw was still quite on the floor and was possibly stuck there forever. Yes, there was a lot of moderately tall brunette women in the world, but there was no mistaking who he was looking at. He was looking at his sister hugging Steve Rogers. His sister, who had just spent a week in New York visiting a semi-boyfriend that she refused to name and was incredibly secretive about. Suddenly, it all made sense.

And that phone call from two nights before where she had made some extremely disconcerting noises while trying to get off the phone as quickly as possible was now at least ten times more disturbing now that he had the name that would be going on the tombstone.

"How did she even meet him?" Sarah marveled. "And why wouldn't she tell you about him? I am so confused."

Taking out his phone and hurriedly looking up the photos on his mobile browser so that he could send them to the sister in question, Paul declared, "Oh, Summer. You are so... incredibly... busted."

* * *

><p>Summer brought two things home with her from New York: a week's worth of memories that made her brain melt, and, thanks to the festering, germy cesspools of pestilence that were commercial airplanes, a raging case of the flu that she almost immediately passed to David. As a result, she spent her first morning that she woke up back in her own bed trying not to vomit and laying half-dead in it with her equally miserable little boy while they watched Disney movies.<p>

She had awoken to the sound of an incoming text, which was from Bucky, whose sense of humor was apparently growing a bit. He'd sent her a very detailed description of what he'd had for breakfast, and it had made her smile and laugh before puking into the bowl she had next to her bed.

So much for the flu shot she'd gotten two months ago.

Since then, she had been in and out of it, forcing herself to get up and do the things she had nobody else to help her with, like wash out the gross bowl and get bottles of water from the fridge, then crawl back into bed and spend the next hour recovering from her efforts. Currently, she was half-watching Aladdin and mentally vowing to bathe in hand sanitizer the next time she travelled, and the pain in her head multiplied when her brother's ringtone blared in her ear.

Answering the call and draping the phone over her ear, she groaned incoherently. "Hnnngghhh."

"You are busted. Busted. You hear me? _Busted_."

"Okay, I'm busted. Now can I hang up and go back to dying in peace?"

"What's wrong with you? You sound like death."

"Flu," she muttered miserably.

"Oh. Fun. Well, anyway, you're busted."

"Cool."

"Do you realize that there's pictures on the Internet of you hugging your secret boyfriend in front of a cab in New York City?"

Her eyes shot fully open, and for a moment, the flu could just go to hell. She shot up with a rush of panicked adrenaline and half-yelled, "What?!"

"Yep. Ergo, busted."

She blinked rapidly, trying to make her brain function through the sudden panic and the giant headache she'd already had. "Uh..."

... Why would pictures of her and Bucky be all over the Internet? He'd been covered up. Not a single picture or lead from him had turned up online since he'd first showed up at her doorstep (and she had checked many times), so why suddenly now? Who could have recognized him?

"Why on earth did you think you had to hide dating Captain America from me?"

She blinked.

Oh.

_Crap_.

Well, at least that made more sense. Except whoever had snapped the photos - probably one of those kids who had been mauling Steve - must have missed when she'd had her tongue down Bucky's throat in literally the exact same spot only a few minutes later.

"Hellooo?"

She sighed, flopping back down to the bed. "I am not dating Captain America."

"Really, Summer? I have photographic evidence. You can't lie your way out of this one."

"Since when does a hug automatically mean dating?"

"It doesn't. Your secrecy and weirdness plus the hug means dating."

She groaned. "I'm not dating him."

"So you just ran into him on the street and said 'oh, Cap, you're my hero!' and decided to hug it out?"

"Maybe."

"All right. I'm putting my foot down. You've got to give me something here. Come on. You owe me that much."

She shook her head, realizing that he was right, to a point. She had to tell him something now. But she still couldn't tell him everything. "Fine. I'm dating his friend."

"Summer..."

"I'm telling the truth," she muttered. "I am."

"If that's true then why wouldn't you just tell me that to begin with?!"

She paused. "Because he's a... complicated friend."

"Famous friend?"

She hesitated. "Uh..."

"Thor? That guy with the wings? Tony Stark? The dude with the arrows? My God, if you're dating the Hulk -"

"None of them," she replied.

"Then who?!"

"I still can't tell you."

The muffled sound that she heard across the line sounded like Paul tearing his hair out. "I'm seriously about to freak out. How did you even meet this guy? And Captain America? What the hell?!"

"It's a long story."

"So?!"

She sighed and tried to sink down far enough into the bed in the hopes that it would swallow her up and give her an excuse to hang up. "I told you, I can't tell you much yet."

"Yeah, well, I think it's time to spill."

She paused, nausea creeping back up her throat. She swallowed it down but scooted closer to the edge of the bed closest to the bowl on the floor. "I'm dating a guy who happens to be friends with Steve Rogers. But it's complicated and I can't tell you everything yet. And you need to trust me and leave me alone about it."

"What, is he a spy or something? Is that why you won't tell me?"

"Maybe. Would that make you calm down and understand?"

"No. I don't want you dating a spy!"

She growled in frustration. "You're making my headache worse."

"How old is he?"

She stared for a moment. Of course, he was technically nearing 100 in a few years, but what was he in terms of actually lived years? "Twenty... eight... ish?" she guessed, basing her answer purely off looks because she had no clue how to calculate the actual answer.

"You don't even know how old he is?"

"I'm hanging up," she muttered, fighting another wave of nausea.

"Yeah, okay. Just keep in mind that the Internet thinks you're Captain America's mysterious new love interest."

Yep. Definitely gonna puke any minute. "Screw me."

"I hope he didn't. Whoever you're actually with."

She shook her head. "Not yet. Put your shotgun away."

He made a scoffing sound. "Oh no. Shotgun is permanently out now. How did you even get yourself into this situation?"

"I don't know," she half-wailed before succumbing to the nausea and throwing up again.

"Sure it's the flu and not morning sickness?"

Narrowing her eyes as she tried to catch her breath, she shakily held the phone to ear and muttered, "Go jump off a cliff."

For the first time during the conversation, Paul laughed. "You seriously sound like such hell."

"You're making it worse."

"Fine, I'll let you go. But my interrogation isn't over. Not by a longshot. I'm getting to the bottom of this."

She really hoped not. The truth wouldn't be all that hard to figure out. There was more than enough online about the mysterious and, according to those infamous leaked SHIELD/HYDRA files, not-dead Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier to figure out that he certainly fit the description of a complicated friend of Steve's.

After hanging up at last, Summer groaned and curled up into a ball under the covers. If she turned into some kind of Internet celebrity from all of this, she'd give herself permission to melt down then. She didn't have the energy to do it now.

She did, however, Google the photos, cringe at the highly presumptuous headlines, and then burrow back into her cocoon of covers with a miserable groan.

* * *

><p>"Well. That's awkward."<p>

Steve, chewing a very loud mouthful of a cereal so fortified with protein that it made cardboard look appealing, leaned forward across the table and peered down at the phone that Natasha had just slid to him. She watched in amusement as his eyebrows slowly rose up as he scrolled down.

"So I hug someone and that automatically means we're in a relationship," Steve sighed, swallowing and pushing the phone back to her.

"Of course," Natasha grinned. "And your adoring fans don't even know her name yet, but they're already posting death threats addressed to her."

He almost choked. "Death threats?"

"Mmhmm. If you kept up with your legion of female fans, you'd know that this isn't out of the ordinary. They're very specific about who they would approve you being in a relationship with. And they get very offended if a rumor pops up of you being with an undesireable."

Steve looked a little dumbfounded before eventually asking, "But they don't have her name?" When Natasha nodded, he added, "Good."

"Where's your trusty sidekick? Still in his room?" Natasha asked, leaning back in her seat.

"No, he woke up before me. I heard JARVIS telling him where the gym was so I assume that's where he is."

"Your assumption is correct, sir," JARVIS unexpectedly confirmed, and Steve jumped a little bit with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

Natasha smirked gleefully. "All this time and JARVIS still manages to startle you?"

Steve sighed and muttered, "Some things never stop being weird."

Her brief silence agreed with his statement. "He seems to be adjusting well to modern technology. Probably better than you did."

"I figured he would," Steve shrugged. "He liked that stuff when we were kids. Science and inventions, that sort of thing."

"While you doodled in your notebooks?" she asked with a small smile.

"Yep," Steve smiled back. Then he looked down, smile fading as he said, "I hope he doesn't mind the pictures."

"What pictures?"

They both looked up to see the man in question entering the common area, the damp state of his hair and clothes giving away just how long he'd been killing time at the gym. Steve had expected him to stay holed up in his room for at least a week before exploring the full contents of their floor, but apparently he'd been quite wrong about that.

"These pictures," Natasha replied, tossing her phone across the room towards him. He caught it effortlessly with his right hand.

His expression remained blank but darkened ever so slightly as he scrolled through the photos. After a few minutes where nobody spoke, he looked up and asked, "Her name... do they..."

"No," Steve assured him. "And they won't get it. Don't worry about it. Everyone will forget about the pictures in a few days. And the good thing is you're not in any of them."

Bucky nodded, tossed the phone back to Natasha, then made a beeline for his room.

Steve glanced at Natasha, then shrugged. "Well. Guess I had nothing to worry about."

But, after Bucky made the short trek to the end of the hall and shut his door behind him, he perched on the foot of his bed and felt... strange. At first he couldn't figure out exactly what the feeling was. It wasn't jealousy, because he had no reason to be jealous. No, it was something less intense than that, something... annoying.

There it was. He was annoyed.

He grabbed his phone and saw that Summer had already texted him about the issue. _Seen the pictures yet?_

As was becoming the norm, his reply was underwhelming. _Yep_.

But a simple "yep" wasn't good enough. Something else was trying to form into a coherent thought, a string of words that would express the odd things that he was feeling in that moment,

She lived in seclusion, yes, and her life in Virginia was fairly sheltered thanks to her son and his situation. But she would encounter other men from time to time. Whether she acknowledged it or noticed it at all, some of those men would find her attractive. For whatever reason, seeing a photo of the entirely non-threatening Steve hugging her had made him realize this.

Maybe she'd encounter a man who had all of his limbs and memories intact and didn't live in fear of accidentally killing her if he got too carried away with her. Maybe meeting such a man would make her realize how stupid she had been to get involved with Bucky in the first place.

And it was this idea that led Bucky to another sudden realization. If he was Steve, he would probably accept such a scenario due to the fact that the woman in question would be much safer and probably happier with someone simple and uncomplicated, and thus let her go, maybe even encourage her to go. He was selfless like that.

And maybe, in other situations, Bucky would be selfless too. Maybe even in most, though he really had no idea yet. But, when it came to this particular situation and this particular hypothetical scenario, and this particular woman, he realized that he was actually quite selfish.

He barely noticed his right hand typing out a new, short text and then hitting send, too busy trying not to be startled at the thoughts suddenly rattling through his head. It probably wasn't normal to want to go march into her house down in Virginia, throw her over his shoulder and then hide her away from the rest of the male population in his room like a caveman. Or was it? Was this how he had felt before over girls that he liked, back before everything went to hell? Was it a major overreaction, considering the fact that he didn't currently have competition for her affections?

Or maybe it was just that night in the hotel bathroom continuing to wreak havoc with his brain and... other things.

He ran his metal hand through his hair, phone dangling from his other one not particularly enjoying this form of torture. At first, it had been an exquisite relief to reclaim his physical instincts, desires that had been beyond his reach and denied him for decades, and it had been an awakening as significant as any other. But now, after just a week spent in her company, and that one particular night, it was as painful and frustrating as it was pleasant. More so now that she was gone.

He needed to figure out a way to get her to New York, permanently. For a lot of reasons. The only question was how.

* * *

><p>After reading Bucky's eloquent "yep" response, Summer reminded herself to be patient with him and his texts as she sat up and forced herself to take a few sips of water. David was knocked out next to her on the bed, thanks to medicine, and she felt her own dose start kicking in after she laid back down and closed her eyes. Sleeping seemed like a great idea, especially after she'd made the mistake of going back to the Internet and reading the comments currently posted on the sites her picture with Steve was posted on.<p>

Apparently, she was fat, ugly, old (_old?!_), wholly unworthy to even breathe the same air as Captain America, and needed to do the world a favor and kill herself. And those were some of the milder comments.

Not that she took it personally. She knew how girls were, specifically the ones who fixated over unattainable men and went way overboard with it online. But it wasn't exactly a confidence booster either.

Her phone buzzed, and she opened slightly bleary eyes to swipe her lock screen and read it. She had to blink away her suddenly blurry vision a few times to get a clear view of the two-word text.

_You're mine_.

The electric little flutters that shot through her stomach made it hurt a little bit more than it already was, but the pain was totally worth it. She read over the two simple words as many times as it took for the message to fully sink in, and when it did, she couldn't help but grin.

She was friends with Captain America. Natasha Romanoff's hair clip was in her purse. Thor complimented her on her cake-making skills. And a disgustingly attractive soldier/war hero/recovering assassin with eyes like two hurricanes had just sent her a text expressing a level of possessiveness that was as awesome as it was brand new.

In other words, she had the life that all of those angry Internet girls could only wish for.

And she was his.

Her reply text encompassed exactly how she felt in that moment. _Hell yeah._

**A/N: Okay, first of all, you guys are the best. Thank you guys so much for this week's reviews and your support! It means so much to me, and I am incredibly grateful to have awesome readers like you. You're just the best. :D Not much else to say today because I'm super busy, but I wanted to make sure I got this update out, so let me know what you guys think, and as always, big hugs and love from me :D see you all next week :D**


	6. Chapter 6

_45 days later_

"So," Dr. Connor said, glancing at his notes that lay on his desk, "tomorrow you leave for D.C.."

Bucky nodded, unconsciously tapping his foot against the floor. The doctor now made house calls twice a week, and their sessions took place in an unoccupied office space near the basement level of Stark Tower. It was better than a closed butcher shop, if nothing else.

"Are you anxious about your first mission since remembering yourself?"

"No," Bucky lied, the foot tapping alone a giveaway of his dishonesty.

"Not anxious at all?"

Bucky withheld a burdened sigh and muttered, "I know you don't approve. There's no point in talking about it."

"It's not that I disapprove," the doctor said with a slight shake of his head. "I am simply... concerned that perhaps it would be best if you had a bit more time to prepare."

"I've been preparing for six months. I have been sitting around every day, talking to you twice a week, waiting for this to finally happen," Bucky pointed out. "There's no point in sitting around and waiting longer. I'm sick of it."

"I don't doubt it, but I don't want you going into this situation with unrealistic expectations of yourself."

Bucky scoffed, something he wouldn't have done a few months ago. These days, he didn't hesitate to express his annoyance or frustration with the well-meaning therapist in sometimes colorful ways. "Like what?"

"Well, firstly, you have to realize that this mission places you in a vulnerable position. You recall the last mission that you undertook, when you were still under HYDRA's control."

Bucky blinked and narrowed his eyes a little. "What's that have to do with -"

"Returning to the field places you in danger of temporarily reverting back to a state that would not be productive to your recovery."

"You think I'm gonna snap and forget everything again."

"No," the doctor shook his head. "I didn't say that. But the potential triggers you may encounter could affect your judgment and ability to think clearly. I want you to have a clear plan in place for what to do if this happens. You need to be able to take yourself out of the situation as quickly as possible." When Bucky had nothing to say to this, he added, "Consider for a moment if, after entering the location, you find a room containing equipment similar to the kind they used to maintain you and wipe your memories. What do you think your reaction would be?"

Bucky looked away for a moment. Pure, unadulterated, unchecked rage would be the most accurate answer, if he had to guess. "What's your point?"

"My point is, you should not underestimate the dangers of what you're about to do."

A moment passed where Bucky mulled over the doctor's words, unable to ignore the truth of them but finding a different truth to be of higher importance. "I don't know how to do anything else."

The doctor nodded. "Yes."

"And I want revenge."

"Of course."

"So I have to do this."

The doctor nodded. "And I understand that. But your revenge has to come second to the mission's objectives. You cannot forget that."

"I know," Bucky muttered in annoyance.

A brief silence passed, and then the doctor said, "I also want you to be sure to give yourself a break should something happen that you cannot control. This is a very serious situation and though you are currently quite stable and doing well, the balance is very delicate. And there's nothing wrong with that. Take this mission as a trial run."

Bucky nodded, his foot returning to mindlessly tapping on the floor.

"And I want you to take sleep meds the night before." Bucky opened his mouth to protest immediately, but the doctor raised his hand and added, "Two to four hours of sleep each night is not sufficient if you are going into the field. It isn't sufficient period, but it is especially dangerous for such a high-stress situation."

"The pills don't even work."

"There was one kind that did."

Bucky's eyes widened by a fraction. "They made the nightmares worse."

"I know. But I'm afraid it's worth the risk this time. I want you to take a dose the night before the mission."

Bucky's expression darkened and he tightened his jaw. That was not going to happen. The old man had no idea what those dreams had been like and therefore could shove that particular suggestion.

"Now," Dr. Connor sighed leaning back in his seat, "on a lighter note, can I safely assume that you will be paying your girlfriend a visit while you're in the area?"

Bucky blinked at the word "girlfriend", the weirdly juvenile connotation to it suddenly making him feel like he was sixteen at a soda fountain with some giggling girl. Then he blinked again, wondering where that particular thought came from. "Yeah."

"And how is that going?"

"It would be better if she lived here."

"But it's going well?"

Bucky shrugged to the affirmative. He'd had over a month to get used to texting as a means of keeping in touch with her daily, and it was still weird, but the alternative - talking on the phone - made him want to panic if he considered it. And apparently the feeling was mutual. So, they stuck to texting, and he nearly always let her pick what they spoke about. Topics ranged from the mundane to strange (what the hell were Internet memes and why did she think an angry cat was so amazing?) to mildly titillating, but the conversations spanned his full day and gave him something to do and enjoy free of pressure.

Then, a few weeks after she went back home, he worked up the nerve to badger her into sending him a picture. She spent the better part of the day protesting before finally giving in, sending a picture of herself with her face hidden behind her hand. He didn't complain because he could see her smiling behind her fingers, and when she tried to make him send one back, he got out of it by claiming that doing so would be a security risk, and she unhappily gave up after awhile.

And she still bugged him for a French-to-English translation at least once a week. He still wouldn't give it.

Maybe he finally would, after surprising her with his visit the next day.

"Do you have any questions or concerns you'd like to share?" Dr. Connor asked, straightening up his notes. "These next few days will be a pretty big step for you."

Bucky stared at the man for a moment and then asked quietly, "Do you think I'm gonna screw it up?"

The doctor drew a breath and replied, "I think that as long as you pay close attention to yourself and your reactions during the mission, and remember what you've learned during our sessions, you will do just fine. Better than fine, if your skills are what your files say they are."

Dr. Connor smiled at the last part, but Bucky's expression remained serious as he said, "I can tell Steve's afraid of me losing it or not being able to handle it. I don't think he wants me to go at all."

"I have no doubt that he is reluctant to see you face HYDRA," the doctor agreed. "But put yourself in his shoes. The last time the two of you were on a mission together, against the very same enemy, to be blunt, he watched you die."

Uncomfortably vivid flashes of that very moment raced behind his eyes, but Bucky forced them away as he glanced down at the floor. "I have to do it."

"And surely he understands that. Otherwise he would have objected to your coming along."

Bucky nodded, and both men sat in silence for a few moments. Then the doctor asked a question. "Do _you_ think that you will screw up?"

On one hand - looking at the situation tactically - the answer was no. His mind and body had been itching for the chance to finally put their skills to use against the people that had both saved and mutilated him, and the chances of him actually screwing anything up was minimal. Storming an underground HYDRA base near D.C. was relatively basic. However, the mental strain of it all was what made him slightly wary. The worries that Steve tried (and failed) to hide behind smiles weren't something he could ignore, and the worries were far from unfounded.

"No," he finally replied.

He could do it, and he would. Otherwise, he'd lose one of the biggest pieces of what made him something, someone, and the thought of that was too frightening to consider.

He'd be fine.

* * *

><p>Later, Bucky sat across from Steve at the table near the kitchen of their common living room, both silent and both staring at phones that they held with their arms resting on top of the table.<p>

Steve was trying not to smirk as he typed on his phone, which meant that he was talking to Natasha, whose current whereabouts Bucky was not aware of. Bucky, meanwhile, was typing with his right hand, talking to the only other person in his phone besides Steve, and to his left stood the newest resident of their floor, watching the both of them with his arms crossed and a mock serious look on his face.

Neither of them paid much attention to Sam Wilson pondering the spectacle of two very technically old men sitting on their phones and texting like two modern teenagers, one who was slightly emo and the other who would have made the dorkiest jock in high school history. His eyes went from the stupidly-grinning Steve to Bucky's deadpan expression, then flitted back and forth before he couldn't take it anymore.

"You both know you're too old for this, right?" Sam said, making both men briefly glance up at him. He looked at Steve and added, "I mean, you look like a teenage girl texting selfies to her boyfriend, and you -" he glanced at Bucky, "I don't even know what's going on there, but -"

Steve gestured to Bucky and explained, "He's got a girlfriend."

Bucky glared at Steve and Sam raised his eyebrows. "You have a girlfriend?"

Steadily ignoring both of them, Bucky lowered his phone slightly while he waited for a reply from Summer. Sam took a seat at the table, between the two of them, and wondered aloud, "No offense or anything, but how is it that you have a girl and I don't?"

Bucky was on the cusp of very sarcastically answering the rhetorical question when Steve stole his moment and replied, "You remember the girl we picked him up from?"

"Same girl?" Sam asked, to which Steve nodded. "So those were hickeys on her neck! I knew it."

Bucky rolled his eyes. Steve shrugged and remarked, "If you knew him like I do, that wouldn't have surprised you."

Sam chuckled, then asked, "Hey, that Natasha chick - still talk to her?"

Steve glanced up and replied neutrally, "Yep."

"She single?" Sam grinned.

Now it was Bucky's turn to thwart Steve's response. "Who do you think he's giggling about?"

Sam glanced at Bucky and then at Steve with eyebrows raised even more than before. "Seriously?"

Steve smiled and kept his eyes on his phone. "Yeah."

"Damn," Sam sighed, throwing an arm on the back of his chair. "I guess the whole unfrozen super soldier thing must be a real turn on for the ladies. Tough market to get in on."

"Well, I'm sure there's one for a soldier with his own personal pair of actual wings," Steve replied with a grin.

"Oh, you mean the wings that he ripped off like they were made of plastic?" Sam asked, pointing to Bucky with his thumb, who glowered at the mention and stared so hard at his phone it was a wonder that it didn't shatter.

"The ones Stark made you are more durable," Steve shrugged. "He was happy to make them, by the way. Said he's been bored since he gave up his suits, so it gave him something to tinker with."

Bucky couldn't quite pinpoint why listening to the two men chat was grating on his nerves, but he began to suspect after awhile that it was the ease with which they spoke. It must have been the way two friends spoke when one of them hadn't once tried to kill the other with their bare hands.

He wasn't sure anybody spoke to him with that kind of ease. And the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him, which started to piss him off, because he didn't want it to bother him.

Steve, as earnest and heartfelt as he was, still acted like Bucky was a ticking timebomb sometimes, which wasn't something he could be faulted for, but still, the sort of casual laughing and chatting currently tickling at Bucky's ears was not something that ever happened between them. Bucky was still learning how to laugh again, and both he and Steve were still learning who he was after all of the unwanted events that had irrevocably changed him.

And that had never bothered him until he sat there and listened to Steve and Sam joke about girls and cars and whatever else came up after he intentionally tuned them out. Luckily, a distraction came before he could also detect a twinge of jealousy within himself and really start rolling his eyes at his own irrationality.

During Sam's initial interruption, Bucky had sent Summer a text asking what she was doing, which never got a very exciting answer but usually led to one conversation or another. This time, she answered with a picture. She was outside, on what looked like a park bench, most of her hair back in a ponytail that was dusted with fallen snowflakes, and she had a rather goofy look on her flushed face as she licked an ice cream cone held in a gloved hand. The words under the picture read,_ Ice cream in the snow because we're idiots._

Completely ignoring the words, he stared at the picture, unaware of how his mouth was falling open slightly until he snapped it shut and put the phone down with a sigh. He couldn't decide if she was diabolical or just clueless what his brain would immediately do with that image.

He looked up and noticed both Steve and Sam watching him curiously. He narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"Everything okay?" Steve asked.

"Why?" he snapped in reply.

"Your face," Sam replied. When Bucky turned his annoyed gaze on him, he shrugged and said, "Little red, that's all."

He decided then that Sam was only marginally less annoying than Natasha. He stood up without a word to go to his room and be alone with his frustration. Later he would choose to look on the bright side; by that time tomorrow, he would be in Summer's very surprised company, and a few days after that, he'd be hopefully picking off HYDRA agents, which meant that it would probably be the best week that he'd had in awhile.

After he left the room, Sam glanced at Steve and said, "He's a blast."

Steve shrugged and replied, "We're getting there."

* * *

><p><em>One day later<em>

Long distance was, well, a word she wouldn't say in front of her son but one that she'd grumble angrily into her pillow each night.

It had only been a month and a half since she had left New York, but it felt like much longer, and the distance was starting to get to her and make her do things. Things that seemed brilliant at the time but then instantly made her cringe after she did it. Like send Bucky innocently suggestive pictures - well, one picture - that he apparently had zero reaction to.

He had replied to her ice cream picture about twenty minutes after she'd sent it with a disappointingly neutral, _Stay warm_.

She was an idiot. That was her inescapable fate.

While she fumbled through that part of her life with her usual ineptitude, the other parts continued on the same as they ever did. She was still broke, still in college, and still trying to make a few dollars where she could with her writing but mostly coming up short. Paul still harassed her on a nearly daily basis, his theories on her secret lover's identity reaching ridiculous new heights each day but by some miracle never quite getting it right. The only thing that really changed was how she passed her time, which was embarrassing all on its own.

She spent an inordinate amount of time analyzing every word exchanged between herself and Bucky, and if there was a picture involved, she'd give herself a headache overthinking it so hard. Then, when her frustration (physical as well as mental) would start to reach epic proportions, it would all end up spilling over into literary vomit on her laptop. Quite literally, she would write out half-conceived ramblings and feelings in her head in the form of sort-of short stories that she would instantly delete most of the time. It was embarrassing. But she didn't know how else to get out her feelings and not go insane.

And it was all his fault, the stupid beautiful fragmented man too far away to touch but close enough to want so badly it hurt.

Which was embarrassing, she was pretty sure, for being only forty six days into a long distance relationship. Not that she was counting.

In any case, that forty-sixth day found her going about her usual daytime cleaning ritual and worrying slightly due to the fact that she had not awoken to Bucky's customary hideously-early first text of the day. Now it was well into the afternoon, and she still hadn't heard from him. She told herself that he was surely just busy with something and would text her eventually, while she tried to focus on the bad 80's music playing on her phone and the floor that she was cleaning.

David was sitting on the floor in the living room, working on his newest hobby, which was taking all of his toys apart piece by piece before reassembling them. He was quite serious about it, his little tongue sticking out as he used a small screwdriver to take apart a rather large toy truck of his, and Summer would smile at his deep concentration every time she peeked at him before going on with her cleaning.

The music (and her terrible off-key singing) was loud enough that she didn't hear a car door open and shut outside in her driveway, and in fact, she kept right on singing along with Foreigner about wanting to know what love is until a knock on her door made her instantly freeze.

It was automatic - ever since that one particular night nearly six months ago, hearing a knock on her front door sent shivers of fear down her spine. But, since she wasn't a fan of living in fear, she quickly leaned the mop handle in her hand against the wall and tried to think of who it could be. Then she remembered that a package she'd ordered online was due to arrive soon, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she walked to the door, where her taser and a can of mace hung on the wall next to it, just in case.

Unlocking the door and pulling it open was easy. Remembering how to breathe afterwards was not, because the very last thing she expected to see was the very man who had been making her worry all day with his silence, standing there in the cold, dressed in that stupid leather jacket she hated and a black scarf bundled against his neck, his hands stuffed in the pockets of dark jeans as their eyes met and her jaw dropped so hard it nearly snapped in half.

Maybe he was a hallucination and she'd used too much bleach on the floor.

She blinked, but he was still there. Still looked perfect. As opposed to her sweatpants and unbrushed hair knotted on top of her head.

_Holy crap._

"Wh-... uh... wha-"

As she struggled to get a single coherent word out through her shock, something amazing happened. He smiled - widely, fully, happily - and then he took a step forward and she was suddenly in his arms. She threw hers around his neck and thought her pounding heart might explode as he kissed her soundly, turning her shock into pure heat that warmed her very fingertips despite her front door still being wide open and letting the wintry air inside.

He didn't seem to mind her unimpressive appearance in the least. There was metal at her back, pulling her as close as she could get, and flesh fingertips at the back of her head, tangled within her hair, and she couldn't breathe or think beyond his mouth as it devoured hers.

When he finally sucked in a breath of air, she drew one of her own and smiled as she brought her hands to his face, touching him like she expected him to vanish as suddenly as he'd appeared. "Why are you here? Why didn't you tell me you were coming? I've been worried all day because you haven't texted me!"

"Wanted to surprise you," he murmured, stopping her heart again with his stare before capturing her lips again. She had no defense and no desire for one, just questions that could be saved for later as she held on and kissed him back as he finally kicked the front door shut behind him.

Day forty six wasn't so bad, after all.

A thought occurred to her the next time he broke away to draw a breath. She'd seen a car in her driveway in that utterly shocking moment when she'd opened the door to find him on the other side. "How did you get here? Did you drive?" When he nodded she furrowed her brows and asked, "You know how to drive?"

His gaze shifted from heated and slightly dazed to mildly offended. "I can drive a lot of things."

To keep herself from smiling and making a stupid comment back to that, she then asked the next pressing question. "... That car isn't yours, is it?"

His only answer was a mere look before kissing her again, and she decided that she didn't really want to know anyway.

What led her to pry her lips away from his one more time was the sudden and unmistakable sensation of being watched. Her hands on his shoulders and his on her waist, she looked to her left and cursed very loudly in her head at the sight of little David, standing at the border of the living room and the kitchen, open-mouthed and quite shocked at what he was seeing. All he needed to do was drop the screwdriver in his hand to the floor and the moment would be complete.

_Plunk_. On cue, he dropped it, mouth still agape.

Well, he was bound to figure it out sooner or later anyway.

Bucky dropped his hands and Summer half-jumped away from him, smiling a little too widely and exclaiming, "David! Uh... look who came to visit!"

David looked at Bucky without closing his mouth, then looked back at his mother just before making a gross-out face and picking up the screwdriver. Then he turned around and walked back into the living room.

Well then. "Not how I planned on telling him, but okay. Could have been worse." She glanced at Bucky to find him still staring at her like she was some delectable beauty, and she touched her laughably bad hair before blushing and muttering, "I'm sorry - if I'd known you were coming I would have... showered... and... not worn this. Speaking of that, why are you here?"

He started to answer, but then Madonna started wailing about being like a virgin from her still-playing phone, and he furrowed his brows as he looked around for the source of the music.

"Uh... yeah, let me get that," she said, walking to the counter where her phone was docked and hurriedly turning it off. She also realized that Foreigner's ode to love had been serenading them during the whole dramatic scene a moment ago, and she thought that was absolutely classic. One just hadn't lived until they'd been kissed passionately by a guy dressed in leather to a cheesy 80's love song.

Then she turned back around and smiled. "So?"

"I'm here for... something."

"Something," she repeated. "Super top secret something?"

He shrugged. "I guess."

"Ah. So how long?"

"Couple days. I came early to see you."

She was disappointed and excited at the same time. A few days wasn't very long. But he'd gone out of his way to make more time with her. And that was something.

It was hard not to smile like an idiot. "I just wish you'd texted me. I'm a mother. I worry like one."

He looked a little surprised when she said that. "I didn't... sorry. I didn't think about that."

"It's okay," she smiled. "But I, uh... I should go change. And brush my hair. Yeah, I'll be right back."

She was so knocked out of her element and still completely thrown that as she made her way down the hall, tugging her hair down, that she was completely unaware of him following her and remained unaware until she walked into her room and was then suddenly pinned between her dresser and a hard chest. She let out a noise of surprise and then looked up just as he almost brutally claimed her lips again, making her whimper as her head spun from the way he kept surprising her.

All she could do was surrender, close her eyes and try to wrap her head around the fact that he was here, it wasn't her imagination, and that he was kissing her like it would physically pain him if he stopped.

When he did, he drew away only slightly, his forehead touching hers as he murmured, "I missed you."

How three, fairly common words made her insides flip and twist as they did, she didn't know, but she couldn't deny the way the sentiment warmed her from the inside out. She smiled, said it back to him, and then touched her lips to his one more time.

And when he finally let her go, a ghost of a smirk showing up on his lips as he left her to change and try to look more like a normal person, she sank back against her dresser and fought the urge to sink to the floor and melt into the carpet.

This must be what it felt like to be truly, genuinely, wanted.

_What a feeling._

With a new 80's hit successfully taking root in the soundtrack of her head, she pushed off the furniture and walked with slightly wobbly legs to her closet, grinning stupidly and enjoying every bit of it.

* * *

><p>Being back at Summer's home was more surreal than he had anticipated it would be. Every inch of the house held a memory, some of them chilling and others rather pleasant, and he had not realized how truly far he had come until he stood where he had once been.<p>

Back then, back when he'd wandered to this forest-hidden little house after leaving Steve half-dead on the shore in D.C., he hadn't known his name, how to think, how to eat, how to even remotely function as a human being and not a singularly-designed machine. Now he had a degree of independence that stood in stark contrast to what he had known before, and he was healthy again, cared for, and the voices in his head didn't scream as loudly as often as they had back then.

Living was still a struggle, and to a point, he expected it to always be one. But seeing how drastic of a change six months could bring was enough to spark some real hope inside of him for the future.

And what would have happened had he ended up face-down in front of any other home but this one all those months ago?

These thoughts swam calmly through his head as the day passed before his eyes entirely too quickly for his liking. He found that Summer's days were much the same as he remembered, structured for her son's sake and constantly busy very much purposefully. It only took David an hour or two of eyeing him suspiciously - surely due to having caught him kissing his mother for the first time - before the child warmed back up to him, by which time all of three of them were out in the cold to let David have his usual playtime outside. The boy's peace offering was two armfuls of snowballs that he used wild hand gestures and smiles to communicate his wish for Bucky to show off how far and hard his metal arm could hurl the things.

Summer stood beside him, bundled up in a coat much heavier than his but still freezing as she watched him take a few branches off of some far-away trees with the snowballs.

"I think you're defying physics at this point."

He glanced at her and gave a slight smirk. David was beside himself with how cool he obviously thought it was.

"So can you hit... that one tiny branch right there between the two big ones on that bigger tree?" she asked, pointing out the branch in question.

He looked at her incredulously. "Are you challenging my aim?"

She shrugged but smiled a little. "Well, it can't be perfect every single time."

He gave her a pointed look and then glanced forward before throwing one of the snowballs about half a second later. When it hit its target perfectly, he looked at her expectantly.

"Yeah, yeah," she shook her head, still smiling. "Got it. Perfect aim."

"How's yours?"

She looked up at him and paused before replying, "Well, with a snowball, I guess pretty average."

"I mean with a gun," he asked slightly more seriously.

"Oh. I don't know. Probably not that great. I'm not terrible, but..."

He already knew that she wasn't terrible, since he'd once watched her shoot a HYDRA agent through the shoulder. But, to ease his mind, he decided to make an offer. "I can help you with that. If you want."

She stared at him for a moment and then asked, "You mean like... target practice?"

He shrugged. "It's probably a good idea... just in case."

She didn't need any further elaborating, nodding just before he set off towards her house. "Where are you going?"

"Getting your gun," he replied over his shoulder, almost grinning at the way her eyebrows shot up.

"We're doing it now?!"

That time, he allowed himself to grin. A matter of minutes later, he had created a makeshift gun range in her backyard, placing variously sized aluminum cans and a few other random items he could find on a number of tree stumps and low-lying branches a safe distance away. Afterwards, he walked up to her and handed over her gun, which she took while shaking her head.

"This is gonna be so embarrassing," she sighed while he watched her fiddle with the weapon. "I haven't used this since..."

He nodded, not needing her to finish that sentence. He still had guilt over the fact that he had been the ultimate cause of that night. After he saw her shake the thoughts away, he said, "Try the biggest can first."

She made David go inside the house then, for the sake of being extra cautious, and then turned her gaze to her target as she turned the gun's safety off and raised it up. He stood slightly behind her, watching carefully and not saying a word, letting her shoot how she naturally would the first time around.

She pulled the trigger and missed, but not by much. She groaned and lowered the gun in frustration, but he took a step forward and said, "First of all, it's your stance."

"My what?" she asked, glancing back at him.

"Your stance," he said, gesturing to her legs that were too close together. "You need to widen it to steady yourself." She followed his instruction some, but then he leaned down and positioned her himself with a hand on the inside of her left leg, just above her knee.

He felt her stiffen at his touch, and after he straightened up and told her to raise the gun, his hands then took her shoulders and rolled them back as his breath intentionally brushed her ear. "Posture."

"Is this just an excuse to feel me up?" she asked a little shakily.

"I don't need an excuse for that," he pointed out as his hand reached out to cover hers as they clutched the gun tightly. "Don't hold it so tight. Relax your grip."

"Might be easier if you weren't literally breathing down my neck and saying... things," she replied, though she didn't seem to actually mind it much. She forced her hands to relax slightly.

"Learning under pressure helps," he replied. "Now aim and take a breath."

She did as he said, and he was only half-aware of his hand on her waist, serving absolutely no practical purpose. "Then breathe out and gently pull the trigger."

A fraction of a second later, the can flew off of the trunk with a satisfying ping, and Summer grinned and relaxed against him, making him realize how close he'd pressed himself to her. She glanced over her shoulder and said, "Thanks, teacher."

His lips curled to match hers, something inside stirring at the teasing title, and before he could let her proximity distract him, he gestured to the other cans and said, "Now try to do that again."

He then took a step back and watched as she hit the next can, and then the one after that as well, pleasantly surprising them both.

"So if I hit all these, what do I get? A reward?"

His gaze turned curious. "Like what?"

Glancing over her shoulder again, she replied, "A translation you still need to give me?"

Of course. He looked from her to the remaining three cans, then back at her, a tiny smirk appearing on his face. "All right."

Her eyes widening gave away the fact that she had not expected him to agree. Then she smiled and settled back to the task at hand, and he decided to be generous and not cheat by distracting her, which would have been exceptionally easy. Besides, she didn't specify when he had to give the translation, should she be successful.

The first of the last three cans was a success, and so was the second. The third and final one happened to be the smallest and furthest, and Summer took her time aiming and readying herself before she took the shot.

And it missed.

"Ugh! Are you kidding me?!" she exclaimed, lowering the now-empty gun and bemoaning the loss of her reward. Bucky could only grin at how she slouched her shoulders and turned around, looking at him slightly hopefully and asking, "A for effort?"

"You should keep practicing," he replied neutrally.

"Wanna pay for my replacement bullets, then?" she asked, eyebrow raised. "I can't exactly afford to make a habit out of this."

"I can get you more," he replied with a slight shrug.

She nodded, then smiled. "My long-distance boyfriend slash arms supplier and weapons trainer. That's hot."

He gave her an amused look and then threw an arm around her shoulders, a part of him still not used to such casual touches but another part wanting them as he guided her back inside the house before her little red nose froze and fell off. "Glad you think so."

He just wished that he didn't have to worry about her ability to defend herself in the first place.

* * *

><p><em>And that, dear son, is how one of the world's most feared assassins (and killer of one of our most beloved presidents) taught me how to be a better shot, while you watched from the living room window.<em>

As Summer wrote her future autobiography in her head, she went about making dinner no different than she ever did, all the while wondering if she would ever stop thinking that all of this was completely bizarre. Totally awesome, but still bizarre. It was moments like these that made her wonder if finally coming clean to her brother could ever be anything but a gigantic disaster.

In between robotically cooking a recipe that she'd made so many times she could do it in her sleep, she stole glances at her kitchen table and tried to hide her smiles as she watched David pretend to tinker on Bucky's metal arm with his little screwdriver. She was already a bit overly hyper from the unexpected visit, and now her brain was running at a mile a minute, knowing how hard it would be for Paul - or anyone who wasn't already steeped into the world of SHIELD and HYDRA and superheroes and spies and all of that crap - to reconcile the Winter Soldier with the image that sat before her now, of a man lounging at her table and watching a child play with his arm with a small smile on his face. It was even hard for her to fully comprehend, and she had accepted him and all of his horrors quite awhile ago.

But she pushed the thoughts aside, the sake of being fully present during the short time she had with him. She watched him demolish dinner once it was done, then felt a little giddy at the domesticity of it all when the three of them ended up watching the first installment of Lord of the Rings in the living room. It was like the time he'd spent here before and yet nothing like it, because he was much, much more relaxed and, frankly, considerably saner, and she didn't think twice about cozying up to his side while David played on the floor at their feet.

Bucky seemed to pay attention to the movie as it played, while his hand played off and on with her hair, and she wished it could be like that all the time. Her nerves weren't so easily frayed with him close, and she felt a level of security that was never present when he was gone. It wasn't that she doubted her abilities to take care of herself should danger present itself, but she also wasn't so deluded as to think that she was anywhere near qualified to handle the sorts of risks that came with sort-of dating HYDRA's ex-human weapon. She'd already learned that the hard way.

When the movie had about thirty minutes left, the warm fingertips still playing with her hair shifted to her shoulder, where they gripped gently and then pulled her closer to his chest. His breath tickled under her ear as his lips brushed her skin and she half-whispered, "Hey now - audience..."

"He's asleep," Bucky replied, pressing his lips to her neck as she peered down at the floor. To her surprise, he was right. David was passed out with a Hulk fist under his head acting as a pillow.

"Have you been watching the movie or watching him so you could do this the minute he was asleep?" she asked, closing her eyes as she leaned her head to the side to encourage his kisses.

"Both," he murmured against her pulse point, sending shivers down her spine as he kissed and then suckled her skin with the clear intent of leaving a very noticeable mark.

"We can never finish a movie," she remarked, her fingers sliding into his hair as he left her neck and kissed his way to her lips. She kissed him first, her hands holding his face and brain going wonderfully blank as he started to pull her her into his lap.

As nice as it was, she did have a child sleeping uncomfortably on the floor, and she only let a moment or two pass before she broke away from Bucky's mouth and smiled. "Hold that thought."

She felt his eyes stay on her as she slipped off his lap and off of the couch, stepping quietly towards David and taking a breath before bending down and scooping him off of the floor as gently as she could manage. She glanced behind her once, on her way out, and felt her cheeks flush at the casual way he sat there, eyes nearly nonchalant in the way that they expressed what he wished to do to her, his hair a little messy, legs further apart than they needed to be, and all in all, she thought, the picture of sex on her couch. And she was pretty sure that he still wasn't actually trying to be seductive at all.

Heart fluttering, she carried her son to bed and made sure that everything was in order for him, flipping on his nightlight - which was, predictably, a Captain America shield designed to look like it had been thrown into the wall, with surrounding cracks and all - before switching off the ceiling light and gently closing the door behind her as she stepped back out into the hall. She noticed that her bathroom door was closed and the light was on, which was a little disappointing, because she had hoped to find Bucky exactly as she had left him. Instead, however, she wandered back down the hallway towards the kitchen, figuring she'd double check that everything was put away and turn off the lights while she waited.

How exactly she ended up picking up his scarf from one of her kitchen chairs and staring at it like it was some fascinating artifact, she wasn't sure, but the thing was sitting there next to where he'd left his jacket, and it ended up feeling as expensive as it looked. Where did he get this stuff? Did Steve furnish him with a credit card from the Bank of Captain America to fund shopping trips in NYC? For that matter, how did he even know how to dress himself as well as he did? Maybe Natasha had a hand in that, because Steve wasn't really the most fashionable dude she'd ever seen...

"Like it?"

She jumped and turned around, immediately letting out a sigh and muttering, "I'm gonna make you, like, blow a whistle every time you walk into a room. And yes. This thing feels like it probably cost you more than what I spend in groceries in a month."

He took it from her hands, staying silent as he straightened it out before draping it around her neck. "It didn't cost me anything."

"You stole it?"

He shrugged. "Came with the car."

"Which you stole." Then she paused and said, "This is probably a chick scarf, by the way."

"Then keep it," he said before using the two ends of the material to pull her against his chest and kiss her.

The kiss was short, but long enough for her fingers to find his hair again before he pulled away. She looked up at him, brushing away a few fallen stray locks on his forehead before noting, "You could use a trim, you know." When he said nothing to this, she added, "I can do it for you if you want. Unless you miss the emo look."

"The what?"

"Nothing," she half-smiled. "So what do you say? Trust me with scissors yet?"

Apparently he did, because a few minutes later, he was seated in one of the kitchen chairs and she was brandishing salon scissors that she used to trim David's hair once a month. She stood just in front of him, and she noticed that he looked a bit wary at the sight.

"I'm not gonna butcher your hair, if that's why you're looking at me like that."

He didn't reply, but leaned back and tried not to appear distrustful. She rolled her eyes. "All right. Shirt off."

He looked up at her for a moment before leaning forward and doing as he was told, tossing the shirt on top of the scarf that was back on the seat of another chair. Then his eyes met hers again, and she didn't miss the glint that was hiding behind his front of indifference.

"I hope you don't expect me to fall to my knees and swoon every time you take your shirt off," she said evenly, though that was sort of what she wanted to do.

She felt his eyes stay on her until she walked around him, setting down the scissors on the table as she examined the back of his hair. She was running a comb through it when she heard him reply, "If you were on your knees, it wouldn't be to swoon."

The comb stilled mid-stroke, and she felt her jaw on the verge of dropping for the second time that day. She was glad that he couldn't see the instantaneous blush on her cheeks.

She forced herself to recover quickly, resuming the combing and swallowing before replying, "Well, look who's got a dirty mind."

He didn't say anything, but she could almost feel the half-smirk she both loved and hated crawl across his lips. She picked up the scissors and put them to his hair, making the first snip and wondering how she was going to survive this particular development. Every single time she thought she had a good handle on what she could expect from him, he would do something like this and she would feel like she was back to square one and completely unprepared and unbearably excited.

She managed to hold it together and do a competent job of trimming his hair, at least until she got to the very front, which required standing in front of him and doing the nearly impossible job of focusing on his hair while his eyes bored up into hers. She persevered, cutting at the front pieces and biting her lip with the intense concentration that staying focused required. Halfway through, she felt fingers start playing with the hem of her shirt, and she made the mistake of looking down and letting her eyes meet his.

Trying not to gulp at the slight smolder she was faced with in his gaze, she looked back up and tried not to think about how she was standing between his legs or how he was now curling his two index fingers into the front belt loops of her jeans, or how close his face was to her chest, because she ran the risk of slipping and doing a hackjob on his hair if she did. His fingers tugged her closer and she held her breath, trying to finish as quickly as she could. Then his hands moved over her hips and then behind, down and over the back of her thighs, and with a huff she decided the cut was good enough and threw the scissors on the table, pressing her lips to his with a fury as he yanked her forward to straddle him.

It went from quiet lock-snipping to a whirlwind just like that, both of them devouring the other as Bucky quickly stood up from the chair, easily supporting her with his left arm alone while the other buried itself in her hair. Then he was walking her towards the hallway, and she was trying not to giggle against his lips as she clung to him, mentally scratching off being carried to bed while being kissed within an inch of her life from her list of things she had yet to experience.

He broke away when he reached her bedroom door, nearly taking it off the hinges before he stopped long enough to wrestle with the doorknob, giving Summer a chance to repay some of the havoc he'd wreaked on her neck earlier on his own. A few fallen hairs scattered on his shoulders caught her eye in the process, and by the time he got them through the door, she was blowing on his skin in an attempt to clear them away.

"The hell are you doing?" he asked in an amused but also confused tone, walking straight at the bed.

"I'm not weird, I'm just trying to - _oomph_!" he threw her on the bed and she smiled, "Trying to get the little hairs off of you."

Unconsciously biting her lip and scooting back slightly on her elbows as she watched him crawl on the bed after her, the thrill of the moment overcame her and she reached out and pulled him down to her as soon as he was close enough, moaning a little when their lips met in a fast, deep kiss. Then her head spun with surprise as he rolled them over, placing her on top of him and sending a curtain of her dark hair falling over both of their faces. He pulled it out of the way with one hand and pushed down on the small of her back with the other, leaving no space between their hips as she kissed him as hard as he kissed her and raked her fingertips down the planes of his chest. The hand in her hair moved it all over one shoulder and then slid its way down her back, then to her side, and finally under the front of her shirt, where it struggled momentarily with the one of the cups of her bra before touching her through it in defeat.

Then Bucky sat up and started clawing her shirt up, and she thought briefly about the last time they'd done this and the fact that they technically were not supposed to go much further than this, but she kept her mouth shut and let him take off her shirt and toss it to the floor. She kissed him as his right hand went to her bra clasp, and his inability to make the thing come apart made her vaguely wonder how much different modern ones were from the kind women had back in the olden days of his youth. He growled in frustration, and as she tried not to laugh, she felt an odd vibrating sensation coming from somewhere in the bed. At first she thought she was imagining it, but she quickly realized that she wasn't, and broke her lips away from his as her brows furrowed.

In her daze, she looked at his metal arm, the hand of which was currently planted on the bed, and her eyes widened as she asked, "Is that your arm doing that?"

"Doing what?" he asked with an annoyed edge to his voice, still losing his war with the elusive clasp.

"Uh... vibrating?" She blinked and then added, "Because if you can make it do that..."

His eyes were pure confusion until something suddenly dawned on him, and his right hand finally gave up its task before he shifted and reached into his back pocket and pulled out his ringing phone, the source of the vibration.

Hiding her slight disappointment, not to mention slight embarrassment over thinking what she had, she watched as he glanced at the screen and then rolled his eyes before cursing in Russian, which was a habit she was starting to find strangely hot. But then he muttered something about having to answer the call and she quickly nodded, untangling herself from his body and letting him get up. He was out of the room in the blink of an eye, and she let out a heavy sigh before falling face-first into a pillow. One of these days, they would manage to successfully screw around without an interruption, and it would be a freaking miracle.

After five minutes passed without a reappearance, she dragged herself out of bed and killed some more time with her usual pre-bed ritual, which took about ten minutes since she dragged her feet through it. But he still wasn't back by the time she was done, so she turned off the main light in her room and flipped on a small lamp by her bed and then crawled under the covers. She had changed into an oversized sleep shirt and not much else in an attempt to be somewhat alluring, and she played games mindlessly on her phone while she waited.

After half an hour had gone by, she started to worry slightly, but she stayed where she was and mentally replayed the night's events, from the as-always unfinished movie to Bucky's dirty mind to the rather tension-filled haircut, and after awhile, she rolled her eyes and abandoned her phone to stare at the ceiling.

Nearly an hour after he'd first left, she was half asleep when she felt her bed depress on the empty side. She turned over, looking up sleepily at the man who had finally come back, still shirtless but a lot more tired than he had looked before his phone had made an unwelcome interruption to their night.

"Everything okay?" she asked, reaching out and taking his hand to guide him down next to her.

He nodded. "Sorry."

"It's okay," she smiled, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand as he settled in. "I'm used to frustration, trust me."

He didn't seem particularly happy about that, but she scooted herself closer to him and asked, "I'm guessing you really do have something major going on down here. And you probably can't tell me much about it." When he didn't answer either way, she asked, "Do I need to worry?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Is this what you're gonna do now?" she asked. "Spy stuff, or... whatever it is you're doing? Avenger stuff?"

He made a face at the word Avenger, but after a moment, he admitted quietly, "It's all I know."

She nodded understandingly. "Guess I'll just have to get used to worrying."

He frowned at her words and then reached out for her. She ended up curled against him, her back to his chest and his right arm draped over her middle as he kissed just behind her ear. "I don't want you to worry."

"You can't stop me," she pointed out, leaning her head back to kiss his lips. She wasn't so tired that she couldn't have given it another go, but he had a slightly far-away look in his eye that had replaced the hunger that had been there before. But that was all right. "So how long exactly do I have you?"

"Tonight and tomorrow. I leave for Washington the next morning."

She had hoped that the "few days" meant three and would officially start the next day, so this made her chest clench a little bit. "And after that? Do you have to go straight back to New York?"

"I don't know yet."

She nodded again, taking a breath and then taking his hand in hers, bringing him closer as she tried to mold herself to him as much as she could. "Well, if I only get you for two nights, then you're sleeping with me and I don't care what you say."

A pause, and then a cautious, tired, "Summer..."

She looked over her shoulder again and gave him a silencing look. "I'm a light sleeper. If you have a nightmare I'll hear you way before you can accidentally hurt me."

He looked far from convinced, but she merely settled back in against the pillow they now shared and interlaced her fingers with his, as his hand rested over her belly. "Try to sleep, Bucky."

It took a few moments, but eventually she felt him relax a bit against her. She closed her eyes, the heaviness from a few moments ago returning to them, and she resisted the urge to purr like a cat when his hand gently left hers to run softly up her arm, down her side and then over her hip, where he paused at the touch of her bare skin where her sleep shirt ended.

Her eyes opened just a little bit, then closed when the pause ended and replaced by his hand lazily running up and down her legs. On the way up, he pulled her shirt up some, letting his fingers trace the outer edges of her underwear beneath it as he pointed out, "You don't usually sleep like this."

"Mm," she muttered, almost asleep. "I was trying to be sexy. Or something."

She was fast asleep, by far the most peacefully in weeks, by the time he murmured against her ear that she had succeeded. He followed her into slumber after awhile, hoping like hell that he wasn't making a horrible mistake.

**A/N: Aaaaand the frustration deepens :D I have never written anything like this before, where this part of things gets (necessarily) dragged out and major frustration ensues, and I gotta say, it's kind of fun to write. I didn't think it would be, but I love it. Even though I kind of want to rip my hair out at the same time.**

**Anyway! My usual thanks to you wonderful, amazing readers and your reviews, follows, faves, and just for taking the time to read this story. You're all amazing and I love you bunches, and I am super grateful for your continued support. Also, my other usual thanks to midnightwings96 for being her amazing self and always helping me out when I'm stuck or need some extra motivation. :D See you all in another week! :)))**


	7. Chapter 7

In the midst of dreaming that she was auditioning for a television singing competition while simultaneously realizing with horror that she could not actually sing, Summer was pulled from slumber by an indistinct sound coming from somewhere nearby. Opening her eyes and blinking away the odd images, she looked around and found herself sprawled on her back, far away from where she had first fallen asleep. A look to her right found Bucky still asleep nearly face-down but clearly on the verge of distress, eyes clamped shut and hands in fists near his pillow, his breaths coming increasingly erratically.

She slowly sat up, instantly fully awake as she watched him carefully and quickly considered her options. Steve had gotten inadvertently punched in the face more than once after trying to wake Bucky from his nightmares, she'd heard, and Summer wasn't sure she'd have much of a face left if she faced the same fate. But, leaving the bed and leaving him to suffer didn't seem like much of a viable option either, though leaving him to his dreams had been exactly what she had done during the month he had spent living with her.

She spent a moment stuck in indecision before a soft, almost imperceptible whimper left his lips and made her decision for her. Reminded of the dreams that she'd comforted David in the wake of since he was a little baby, she cautiously moved closer and watched him for a few more seconds before slowly reaching out her hand.

Poised to leap away any minute if she had to - hopefully quickly enough, though that was unlikely - she ran her fingers soothingly through his hair, softly like she would with David, all while watching his face and breathing for any sign of calming or worsening. When the touches didn't seem to be making it any worse, she let herself move in closer while she spoke as comfortingly as she could manage, hoping her words of him being okay and safe got through to him somehow, and to her relief, after a moments, his breathing slowed down a bit.

She wasn't sure how long she stayed like that, putting her mothering skills to the test on a much more difficult subject than her son, but by some miracle, in time, his fists uncurled and his jaw relaxed along with his breaths, and he seemed to fall back into a semi-restful sleep. She smiled, not having expected success, and settled down near him to try to sleep some more herself, her hand moving from his hair to twine with his fingers as she closed her eyes.

But, the peace was short-lived. She was startled awake nearly an hour later to him shooting up in bed with a ragged gasp, breathing hard and looking around in confusion as she quickly scrambled up to a sitting position behind him.

"It's okay," she said, voice tinged with sleep. "You're okay." Then she reached out to reassuringly touch his arm, and he flinched away, looking back at her with wide eyes that frightened her a bit with how confused they were.

"Bucky," she said quietly, cautiously, her hands down in surrender, "calm down. You're all right. You were dreaming."

He blinked, still breathing like he'd just done laps around a city, recognition dawning in his eyes as he muttered, "Summer?"

She nodded in relief, taking that as a signal that touching him would be okay now. She placed her hand on his right forearm and replied, "You fell asleep with me, remember?"

He stared at her for a moment before looking down at her hand on him, then dropping his head and running his metal hand over his face. She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder, almost able to feel his misery rolling off of him. There had been times in her life where sleep had not come easy, but to experience his level of sleep deprivation on such a prolonged basis was nearly unthinkable.

"Is it still like this every night?" she asked softly, listening to his breathing slowly return to something more normal but still labored. He nodded, and she pressed a kiss to his shoulder, hoping that her presence was at least a little comforting. "Maybe an hour ago I woke up and I could tell you were having a nightmare. I tried to help, and you seemed okay after a few minutes."

It was quiet for a few moments before he replied, "I wasn't. I think I heard you, but..."

"Didn't really help?" she surmised, a little disappointed, but that was just life, she supposed.

His tone was blank and miserable when he eventually muttered, "I shot you." Another pause, a swallow of his dry throat, and then, "I thought you were... I thought... but then I saw your face and..."

"Hey," she gently interrupted, trying to pull his face towards hers, but he resisted and she didn't push it. "It was just a dream. Dreams suck, I know."

"They won't go away," he said miserably, with all the exhaustion of someone who had slept the better part of seventy years but couldn't catch more than a few hours at a time now.

She could feel tension returning to his muscles as he worked himself back up, so she made him look at her and wouldn't let him stop her this time. "I know. And the dread's probably worse than the actual dreams, right?" He just looked at her, and she had a feeling that she was right. "I know because mine suck too. Nothing like yours, I'm sure, but still."

His eyes turned mildly questioning but no less exhausted and dejected. She pursed her lips and cringed at the thought of having to talk about it, but he had never breathed a word of his dreams to her until now. She couldn't really ask him to open up if she wouldn't do the same.

"HYDRA?" he asked quietly. "The agents that found me here?"

"Sometimes," she replied. "Maybe once a week I have that one. But it's usually Mark and what he did. I guess almost suffocating to death is kind of perfect for nightmares because you can't breathe and then..."

She trailed off when his eyes widened and suddenly became slightly murderous. Then she remembered that she'd never told him that part of the story. She straightened a little, clearing her throat and gesturing unnecessarily with her hand towards her mouth as she explained, "Uh... he tried to keep me quiet and... yeah. I passed out and when I woke up he was passed out drunk next to me and..." She glanced up at him and fell silent, knowing the hardness of his glare wasn't directed at her but still feeling like she might wither under it anyway.

"You could have died."

She nodded. "Yep. But I didn't." One more look at him found his expression full of questions, but she blurted out her next words before he could ask her anything. "One time I dreamed it was you hurting me. Exact same dream I always have, except it was you instead of him."

All at once, his eyes grew large, his face paled, and he looked like he might throw up, but before he could take the new bit of info the complete wrong way, Summer clarified her point by holding up her hands and saying, "I'm telling you that because that's how stupid brains are. I know you'd never hurt me, and dreaming that made absolutely no sense. Dreams are just... dreams. They don't mean anything. And they don't need to have power over you. Or at least that's what my old therapist used to tell me." Then she paused and added, "All your dreams can't be bad. Don't you have good ones every once in awhile?"

He reluctantly looked away then, thinking as he looked at his hands in his lap. "I think I've had three. One of Steve, two of you."

"Really? Do tell," she smiled, desperate to lighten the mood. She scooted back on the bed and pulled on his hand to follow her, and after a moment they were settled against the headboard, her facing him while he stared out in front of them.

"First one was when I left here," he said, still speaking in a hushed, sleepy tone. "I fell asleep in the car. Second was last night."

"Last night?" she repeated. "... And?"

He gave her a look that told her he wasn't going to tell her, and after a moment she rolled her eyes. "Tell me and I'll tell you one I had about you. A good one, not a stupid one." His expression changed to mildly intrigued, and she grinned and said, "I'll go first, if that helps. So, one time like a month ago, I dreamed that I took you to this big library because you said you wanted to read Charlotte's Web, which is this kid's book about a pig and a spider, but we couldn't find it anywhere, so you got really pissed off and punched a hole into a bookshelf. Then the librarian started coming towards us all mad, so you took us into the computer lab and dragged me under a desk. And then you started kissing me and stuff, but I woke up before the, you know, good stuff could happen. Always happens to me. Then I wake up and I'm like..." she forced herself to shut up before she made a bigger idiot of herself. She looked up to find his eyes a little less tortured and a little more amused, which was definitely a good thing. "Anyway. Your turn."

She waited impatiently while he looked down, appearing thoughtful for a bit, and her attention was briefly drawn to the early morning light starting to break through her curtains before his voice snapped her eyes back to him. "You know how we walked in on Steve and Natasha... in the kitchen?"

She held her breath. Yes, it was difficult to forget walking in on America's oldest no-longer-virgin getting a favor from his terrifying spy girlfriend. "... Yeah."

He glanced at her, then almost let a grin cross his face as he added, "You shouldn't send me pictures of you... licking things."

She stared at him for a moment, letting those two hints sink in. Then her eyes widened and she broke into a smile, coupled with a stupid blush she could just never avoid. "So that picture wasn't a complete failure? That's awesome! I thought it just went over your head from the way you answered me."

"... I didn't really think I was supposed to say what I thought."

She chuckled and leaned her head back. "Well, that's kind of the idea of texting. But since you're from the stone age, I'll let it pass. This time. Next time, share your thoughts."

He started to return her grin, but it quickly faded as his face grew somber once more. "How can you laugh and joke after... after talking about what happened to you?"

He looked genuinely perplexed, and she drew a breath before replying, "Well, it happened six years ago. I've had my time to fall apart over it and let it destroy me, and trust me, it was a crapfest. My grandma was dying and my brother was away at college, and when I found out I was pregnant..." she shook her head, eyes closing briefly. "I thought it was the worst possible thing that could happen. I was terrified, heartbroken, in denial, everything you can imagine. I tried to go and have an abortion. I was early enough that they gave me pills for it, so I came home and took them, then freaked out and made myself throw them up. I still feel guilty about that."

She glanced at Bucky to find him listening intently, his face the picture of seriousness. "So, even though I decided to keep him after that, I was angry and resentful and bitter about it. I let what happened pretty much consume me and was a complete wretch and wouldn't even eat until my grandma literally smacked me straight. I don't know what I would have done without her. I did the therapy thing because of her nagging me, found a support group. I didn't think it would help but it did. It was great. That was how I learned to 'take my power back', as they called it. Then I had my baby. And my grandma died a few months later." She took a breath and then added, "She's the one who came up with his name. I was stumped, but she said that for me, going through with having him after what I went through was like facing my own personal giant. So she suggested David. You remember David and Goliath?"

He nodded. She took another breath and said, "Anyway. My point is, it all is what it is. And Mark doesn't have any power over me anymore. It'll always hurt and I don't think you ever quite 'get over it', but... it doesn't define me, you know? So I guess that's why I can talk about it and not freak out. I've accepted it."

He looked caught somewhere between flabbergasted and completely confused, but in his defense, she knew that she'd just dropped a whole lot of emotional baggage on top of his head. That baggage was one of several reasons why she used to think that she'd never find a man willing to even attempt a relationship with her, but maybe the key was finding one with their own baggage and thus the capacity to understand. And boy, had she hit the motherload of mutual baggage. Reagan National Airport had nothing on them.

In time, she found herself curled up at his side, her head on his chest, and she listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat and subtle mechanical sounds from his arm. He was in deep thought above her, or at least that's what his expression had told her the last time she'd peeked up to check on him.

She was nearly on the verge of falling back to sleep when his voice rumbled in her ear, pulling her back from the edge. "I can accept some things, but some I just... can't."

Realizing that he was picking up where they'd left off nearly ten full minutes of silence ago, she blinked a few times and asked, "Like what?"

A full minute or two passed before he gave an answer. "I don't want to tell you."

She kept her head down, thinking maybe he'd have an easier time telling her whatever it was if he didn't have to look directly at her. "If you could scare me off, I would have run for the hills already. Probably when I read that you killed a president."

Another few minutes, and then he said somewhat brokenly, "But kids are different."

Her stomach instantly twisted with dread. She didn't say a word, waiting to see what he'd say next, praying he wouldn't leave it there and leave her imagination to run wild with the potential horrors behind those words.

"I shot a little girl in the head, in the middle of her birthday party, right in front of her parents. And I have no idea why."

She closed her eyes, her belief that nothing he could say could shock her proven false. She had never imagined his targets being anything other than adults, important people like Howard Stark and JFK and Steve. Those, she could at least understand why HYDRA would want gone, but a kid? _Why?_

And to think that the same man who had played Angry Birds with her son, let the boy use his arm like a big toy and had humored his every whim, had once been so utterly stripped of his soul that he could kill another child just like that...

No wonder he couldn't sleep at night.

"It wasn't you," she eventually managed to say. "It wasn't your fault."

"But I remembered Steve. If I could remember him, how I could I not... how could I just not even question..."

She finally lifted her head and let her eyes meet his, the pit in her stomach growing deeper at the sight of the pain etched in his features. "Please don't do that. You have to know that blaming yourself is... it's no different from if I blamed myself for what happened to me."

"You didn't hurt anyone," he pointed out.

"Doesn't make you any less of a victim," she replied.

And that was the truth of it, if he could look past his guilt long enough to see it. But she couldn't sit there and lecture him about it, or pretend to have any idea what it was like to have that kind of blood permanently stained on one's hands. Maybe the best thing that she could do was continue to show him how she accepted him, despite her still-uneasy stomach, and remind him during these difficult nights that he really was, in every sense of the word, innocent. And maybe, someday, he would start to believe her.

As the sun rose outside, she watched the rest of early morning pass by in a lazy, somewhat heavy, silent crawl. Her head ended up back on his chest and his fingers found their familiar place in her hair as she dozed off and on through the questions and thoughts swirling through her head that she wouldn't give voice to. Occasionally she would feel his heart rate pick up beneath her ear, signaling that he was spiraling too far into his own mind, and she would either take his hand or mumble comforting words between kisses to wherever she could reach until he calmed down and his heart returned to normal.

This continued until her door creaked open and a half-asleep little boy came scampering inside the room in his Captain America pajamas. She separated herself from Bucky and smiled at her son as he crawled into the bed and curled up in her lap, cuddling with her as he turned suspicious, untrusting eyes on the man sitting on the other side of his mother'a bed.

"This is how he wakes up every day now," she explained, while Bucky and David took part in a staredown that she thought was more cute than anything, since it consisted of David's dirty looks and Bucky's innocent stare back. "I don't think he likes the idea of sharing me much."

Bucky looked up from David to her, slightly nodding his understanding while David tightened his little arms around her in a "she's mine" gesture. Bucky almost smiled. Summer did and then asked, "Have you figured out how to work coffee machines?" When he nodded, she added, "If you go start some I'll make pancakes."

And that was the official start to the new day, Bucky nodding and rising out of her bed looking more tired than when he had first laid down in it the night before, and her not faring much better. She would live, though, and so would he. At least there was always coffee. And maybe getting a hideously early start wasn't so bad, since Bucky would be gone next morning, and as cheesy as it may have sounded, she didn't want to miss a moment.

* * *

><p>It was halfway through watching her pancakes get put away silently but quickly by the two men in her life that Summer remembered she needed to drive into town to pick up a prescription for David. It couldn't be put off, unfortunately, so she invited Bucky on the world's most boring errand-run before taking a shower and then facing the task of figuring out what to wear.<p>

Standing in front of her closet in a towel, she eyed the contents of it warily, saving her most contemptuous glare for the pair of boots that sat innocently near the front. To her slight shame, she had been wearing them a couple times a week in an attempt to break them in and make them at least somewhat wearable, but they still hurt if she wore them too long, and she wondered how other women could wear such things all day and not have their feet fall off. Nevertheless, her reason for having bought and worn them in the first place was sitting in her kitchen with his effortless, mildly disheveled, natural allure, so she figured it was a good time to break out the torture boots again.

After tossing them on the floor behind her, she started rummaging through her clothes and frowning at them all, all of them seeming either too dressy or too casual or too something or another. But then something caught her eye at the very back of the clothes rod, a black leather jacket that was a relic from her pre-baby days but still in fine condition. She pulled it out and looked it over, quickly deciding why the heck not before grabbing a dark purple dress she'd bought for New York but never got to wear, ignoring the fact that she was probably overdressing for a trip to the pharmacy. But that was irrelevant when she had more important reasons to dress above her usual standards.

The dress ended just above her knees, cinched at the waist with a thin black belt, and the neckline was low enough that she would probably need to steal Bucky's lady-scarf to stay warm. Black tights went under the dress, and when it came to makeup, she went easy on it to keep from looking like she was trying too hard. Same went for her hair, which was towel-dried in waves that would be trying to reach past the middle of her back if she didn't get it cut soon. When she was done, she looked over her reflection in the mirror above her dresser, trying not to feel completely ridiculous and rolling her eyes as she headed out to the hall.

Heels clicking against the floor, helping give off a false air of confidence, she walked into the kitchen to fetch David and get him dressed, glancing at Bucky as he sat at the table with his back to her, doing something on his phone. The sound of her footsteps caught up with his ears as she was telling David to head to his room, and she looked at Bucky just in time to see him turn and glance at her before doing a slight double take. His eyes narrowed and began their sweep of her at her boots, slowly working their way up, and just when their eyes met, she mustered up what she prayed was a flirtatious grin and then headed off to follow David to his room.

When she came back, both of them ready at last, Bucky had shifted the chair so that he'd be able to see her the moment she reappeared. She could feel his stare as much as see it, and as satisfying as it was, she wasn't sure if she would ever get used to the intensity of it. It didn't help that over time, his stare had evolved from from much more innocent origins to something that was now so overtly lustful that she finally knew what people meant when they threw around terms like "eye-sex".

She heard him stand from the table when she grabbed her purse and started throwing her keys and other essentials into it, and she sensed him lurking inches behind her when David ran off to grab some toys from the living room.

"Hurry up, kiddo, we should have left like ten minutes a-"

Her words died at the sensation of her hair being gripped and her head being pulled back, gently but swiftly, and suddenly she was being kissed so ferociously that she almost fell over from the shock of it and had to be steadied by an arm that helpfully wrapped around her waist and held her upright.

It was over before David could walk back in and be subjected to them kissing a second time, and when her mouth was free again and his arms were gone, Summer straightened up and stared in a daze at her unrepentant assailant as he slowly walked backwards towards her front door. Then he had the audacity to run his eyes back down over her body and bite his lip, a habit he seemed blissfully unaware of, before opening the door and slipping outside.

She was still staring at the door with her mouth half-open when David reemerged, waving a hand near her face to make her snap out of it. She shook her head and decided that it was unreasonable to be so utterly frustrated after a single kiss, regardless of how ridiculous it had been, and she marched out to her truck while actively fighting the urge to throw something hard at Bucky's head.

It was nearly two full hours before the errands were done and they were back home, which were two hours full of combatting Bucky's hand crossing the border of his passenger seat to try to play with (and slip under) the hem of her dress and giving in to David's silent but effective pleas for junk food which made the excursion last longer than it needed to. By the time she'd gotten them back into the woods and safely inside the house, her frustration levels had not dropped and she was debating how exactly to get a minute or maybe fifteen alone with the source of her angst with her son awake, but then the jerk dropped his jacket on a chair and said something about taking a shower before disappearing down the hall.

_Of course_. She plopped down on her couch and flipped on cartoons before letting her head fall back and eyes close, considering walking outside and face-planting in the snow to get her brain to cool down.

Then her eyes opened and stared at the ceiling just before her doorbell rang.

She shot up with immediate alarm, all warm and mushy thoughts gone in a flash as her reflexive fear set in. David, the poor boy, looked scared as well, and Summer quickly assured him that it was probably just the mailman as she got up to her feet, wobbling slightly in her heels, grabbing her taser from her purse as she made her way to the door.

She glanced down the hall, where she could hear the shower running. Then she moved to a window and peered out the side of it, but she couldn't see much of anything at the angle. Then whoever it was at the door knocked a few times, and she swallowed her fear before biting the bullet and stepping around to unlock the door.

Taser still firmly in hand, she cracked open the door, hoping it really was the mailman. But it wasn't, and as soon as she got a glimpse of who was on the other side, every drop of blood in her veins ran cold and her face paled.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she choked out, her tone equally shocked and venomous as she came face to face with the man from her nightmares for the first time in over four years.

Mark looked the same as she remembered, five feet and nine inches of averageness, short light brown hair and brown eyes, pleasant enough to look at if one didn't know any better. He held up his hands in surrender and said quietly, "Please don't freak out. I just - I was in town and -"

She stared at him with wide eyes until she noticed him looking over her shoulder. She followed his gaze to David, peeking around the corner of the living room, and she instantly snapped, "David, go to your room. Right now. I mean it. Go."

The boy obeyed, and Summer turned back to her unwelcome visitor, who looked a bit dumbfounded at having seen his son for the first time since he was an infant. "What do you want?" she asked harshly. "And why didn't you call?"

"Well, I knew you wouldn't answer if I did," he replied, his tone blank rather than accusatory. "I just wanted to... see him."

"Really?" she asked, eyebrows raised and old anger sparking to life. "Are you kidding me? Almost five years later?"

He winced a little and nodded, closing his eyes. "I know, I know. Can I just... I know I have no right, but can I at least come inside?"

"Uh, no," she replied.

He paused and said, "Technically I'm still allowed a few visits a year."

"Technically, you can go to hell," she shot back. "He doesn't even know you. He doesn't do that great with people he doesn't know. You'd know that if you gave a crap about him."

He sighed, putting his hands on his hips and looking down, something she knew he did when he was getting frustrated. "Can I please just come in for a minute?"

She stared at him for a moment, long and hard, and then she changed her mind. Fine. Let him have a glimpse of what she had built for the last five years with nothing but the barest of financial support from him. Let him see how little she ever needed him in the first place. She swung the door open and raised an eyebrow. "Fine. One minute."

He looked shocked at her change of heart, but he quickly recovered and stepped inside, awkwardly. He noticed the taser in her hand that she was making zero effort of hiding, and his eyes widened briefly, which almost made her grin.

Once he was inside, she closed the door and crossed her arms, staring at him as he looked around silently.

"You've... uh... you've kept the place up pretty well," he said dumbly, glancing at her before looking at the taser again and then quickly looking away.

"Were you expecting filth and everything in shambles?"

Mark sighed and waved his hand before muttering, "Can you please not do this?"

"Do what? I think I've earned the right to act like a bitch to you, don't you think?"

"I know I've been an idiot," he replied, "and I know you hate me. But I've been thinking about him, and... I don't know. I don't like how all of this turned out."

"Which is entirely your fault," she pointed out.

He sighed again, shoving his hands in jean pockets and leaning back against her kitchen table. Silence fell for a moment, and she was about to declare his time up and shoo him out when he glanced up at her and muttered, "For what it's worth, you look great."

She drew in a deep, calming breath to keep from exploding and answered, "All right. Get out."

"Summer -"

"Nope," she shook her head, "no. Out. I'm not doing this."

"Can I please just talk to him? Just for a minute?"

"If you don't get out," she replied, "I swear I will tase you right in the face."

His eyes widened a little at the threat, but he persisted. "Summer, please."

"You still have no clue what 'no' means," she laughed bitterly. "Have you changed at all in the last five years? Or are you still the same idiot you've always been?"

Somewhere in the middle of her last sentence, Mark seemed to suddenly notice a pair of men's shoes near the front door, and after that, a man's leather jacket in the chair sitting next to him. His expression was a bit incredulous when he looked up and asked, "Is... is there a guy here with you?"

In her fury and outrage, she had almost forgotten about Bucky entirely. Now that she remembered him, she realized that she couldn't hear the shower running anymore, and that meant that she should probably make Mark leave within the next sixty seconds. She quickly schooled her features into blankness, however, and shrugged. "What if I did? How is that your business?"

He opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish. "Just... just curious, I guess."

"Well, you lost your right to be curious a long time ago," she replied. "Now for the last time, get out."

"Let me talk to him first."

She gritted her teeth. "No."

"Legally, you can't deny me this."

"Like hell I can't."

They stood at an impasse, her fingers itching to tase him into the next century. She watched him carefully, vowing to do it if he took so much as one step towards the hallway.

She never got to find out what his next course of action would have been, however, because a deceptively soft-spoken voice from the edge of the hallway made them both look up in slight shock, albeit for very different reasons.

There stood Bucky, still wet and shirtless after his shower, staring at the stranger in the dining room with seemingly zero thought as to the metal arm very much on display, looking poised and ready for battle as he asked, "Who the hell are you?"

Summer picked her jaw off the floor and glanced at Mark, who had gone deathly pale and wide-eyed as he stared openly at the man demanding his identity. Judging by the way that he stared at Bucky's arm, he knew what it meant and who he was. He would have had to have been living under a rock for the last six months to not know.

She held her breath. This wasn't going to end well.

* * *

><p>From the moment the sound of distant but clear arguing reached his ears, Bucky's reaction had been instinctual and rapid. The last time somebody had knocked on her door while he was there, he had ended up killing two HYDRA agents and narrowly saving her son from certain death. He had no interest in taking the chance of a repeat performance of that night, so with his arm as nothing more than an afterthought, he all but stormed out of the bathroom in jeans and came to a stop at the edge of the hallway.<p>

His question of the man's identity was pointless, because once he took a good look at him, it was obvious who he was. The eyes gave him away, because they were the same eyes that belonged to Summer's son.

He looked at Summer, and the anger that she wasn't trying to hide was all the confirmation he needed. She also looked a bit terrified, looking back and forth between him and the man she'd called Mark, like she expected something horrible to happen any minute.

The sound of a chair falling over stole Bucky's attention, and he shifted his gaze to find Mark scrambling after nearly tripping over his own feet trying to scuttle backwards towards the door. His eyes were wide with sudden terror and he reached out a slightly shaky finger, muttering, "You're... you..." Then he looked at Summer and half-exclaimed, "Why is he in your house? Wh - he - he's..."

"Yeah. He is," Summer replied, glancing at Bucky nervously after she spoke the words.

Mark gaped at her before backing up closer to the door. "You're insane, Summer."

It was when he grabbed the doorknob and tried to make a run for it that Bucky sprung into action, and the poor fool simply never had a chance.

Bucky crossed the room as the door opened and grabbed him by the neck of his jacket, effortlessly yanking him back and turning him before clamping his metal hand over his throat and making a pathetic half-scream come squeaking out of his mouth. Bucky looked at him through narrowed eyes, his grip tight enough to make Mark panic but not completely deprive him of oxygen as he took his time looking the man over.

"So you're Mark," Bucky stated, tone low and clearly threatening by the way Mark choked a little harder and widened his eyes. "I've heard about you."

Then Bucky looked to his left, to Summer, who stood by still clutching her taser, watching with alarm but not with fear. Their eyes met, and words were not necessary for him to communicate his silent question. He left what happened next up to her, and the slightest inclination of her head gave him all the answer he needed.

He turned back to the very red, sputtering face of the man in his grip, and then tightened his grip as he walked him forward, through the door, before throwing him down to the ground hard enough to make him cry out in pain despite the cushion of snow beneath. He coughed and wheezed and tried to scramble up to get away, but Bucky kept him down with a kick to his ribs, then one to his stomach, each making him cry out miserably and curl in on himself in a vain attempt to fend off more blows, but a metal hand curled around his upper arm and flung him on his back. A distinct cracking sound told Bucky that he'd either broken the arm or at least pulled it out of socket, and the scream that resulted sounded like one of a man dying. Clearly, pain was a new concept to the man

Moving with a precise and terrifying fluidity, Bucky pressed a knee to Mark's chest and pinned him to the ground, grabbing his throat again, this time with his right hand, while his other reared back and then smashed into his face. His nose shattered on impact, but if Bucky had not been holding back, his entire face would have met the same fate. His movements were careful and strategic, however, and this, for better or worse, was what he knew he was best at, designed for, and knowing that the target of his assault was deserving and entirely not the least bit innocent made it feel damn good for once to throw a punch.

"Stop! Please," Mark moaned pathetically, face bloodied and bruised from the single punch and breathing labored under Bucky's grip on his neck. "I won't - I won't tell anyone, I swear!"

"No, you won't," Bucky said, tone lower than before and dripping with a fearsome confidence. "Because if you do," he went on, taking his hand leave Mark's throat and using it to cover his mouth and nose, "I will find you wherever you go, and I will enjoy listening to you scream while I cut you apart."

The combined effect of his threat and the very intentional suffocation by his hand made Mark's eyes nearly tumble from their sockets and body thrash with panic as much as it could while still being pinned to the earth.

"Don't come back. Don't make me regret letting you live."

He waited until the last possible moment to remove his hand and let the man take a painful, frantic gasp of air as he finally let him free, standing up and watching as he laid there struggling for breath, unable to move yet despite how desperately he wanted to. Bucky stood there, glancing behind him to find Summer watching from the doorway with an unreadable expression. Then he turned back to the man laying in front of him, and as a parting gift, sent a brutal kick flying directly between his legs. By that point, Mark was nearly unable to scream anymore, and wept through the blinding pain instead.

Bucky didn't move an inch until the man had crawled through the snow and managed to collapse into the driver's seat of his car, eventually peeling out of the driveway and nearly hitting a tree in his haste to get away. Once the car was out of sight, Bucky turned around and walked back towards the door, where Summer was still standing and wearing an expression he still couldn't wholly decipher. She didn't seem displeased, however.

He stood a few feet in front of her as she closed the front door and locked it, cold after having beaten the man to an inch of his life while wearing only jeans in nearly-freezing temperatures, but also warm from leftover adrenaline and the rush of how satisfying it had been to repay a bit of what Mark had inflicted on the woman who was still currently gripping her taser for no reason.

Trying to ignore the almost audible humming in his veins, he focused on her as she turned around to face him and immediately started babbling. "I'm really sorry about that. I had no idea he was coming, and I shouldn't have let him in, but I just..."

He shook his head. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"No, I do, because if he tells someone -"

"He won't."

"But what if he does?"

Bucky refrained from replying, instead looking down at her hands before stepping forward and taking the taser from her grip and tossing it on the kitchen counter. Then, operating on something more instinctual than thought, he put his hands on her hips and backed her up gently against the door.

As she looked up at him with widening eyes and parted lips, he let his actions express what his words couldn't, because words failed and deserted him in moments like these. Cradling her head with two hands that only moments ago had been exacting revenge on her once-tormentor, he brought his lips down to cover hers in a kiss that was neither soft nor hard, neither demanding nor pliant, but simply, wholly, consuming. He wanted to seal her, set her apart from her own past, pull her in until she couldn't get any closer, and assert a claim that the instincts guiding his actions understood far better than his brain did.

The leftover tension and anxiety in her body drained as it all but slumped against his, her slightly shaky hands moving up his arms until they met in his hair. The soft skin of her cheek and her hair were mere subtle tickles under his left hand, far from the warm and sensuous things they were to his right, but he savored what little he could feel before the moment came to an end that lingered between their shared, heavy breaths.

It seemed that she had been left as speechless as he, which was significant for a girl who never seemed to be without something to ramble about at any given moment. He hoped that it meant that she understood what he couldn't say, what he wasn't sure he even fully comprehended.

He almost jumped in surprise when she finally did speak, so wrapped up he was in the silence. "David. I have to go get David."

He nodded, reluctantly letting her go and stepping aside so that she could walk past him towards the hallway. He instantly felt colder without her, but he was used to that. What he wasn't used to was the odd sense of heaviness in his chest, not painful or unpleasant, but impossible to ignore.

Whatever it was, it was a thousand times better than feeling nothing at all.

* * *

><p>One thing that he could say for her was that Summer was nothing if not resilient. If she was disturbed or troubled at all by Mark's unexpected visit and Bucky's pummeling of him into the ground, the most that she showed of it was acting slightly more hyper than usual as she made dinner. She was slightly on edge, that much he could tell, and she had a bit of a dazed look in her eyes from time to time, but he genuinely could not tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing.<p>

The routine stayed the same, and he thought that it had become as much of a comfort for Summer as it was for David. He would know - routine was one of the first things his therapist had advised him to construct and stick to, and it really was a wonder how simply sticking to a predictable routine could be a calming thing.

But, as comfortable as he knew she was in her routine, her home, he kept thinking of what may have occurred had he not been there when Mark paid his visit. The most likely scenario was probably Summer tasering him until he voluntarily left, but her ability to fight an intruder off was beside the point. He didn't want her to have to fight anybody, and especially not someone who had hurt her so badly in the past.

He didn't want to leave her home the next day and then return to New York without her a few days after that. He wanted her where he could see her, close to him and never as far as she had been for the last month and a half.

He planned on talking to her about moving after she put David to bed, and he waited patiently when that hour came. She disappeared in the bathroom with her son to give him a bath - still wearing the boots that had been torturing him all day, which he thought was a sign of how distracted she really was by the day's events - and he was left to wander around the house, trying to get his thoughts together and figure out how to present them in a way that would convince her to agree with what he thought was blindingly obvious - that she needed to stay close to him, all the time.

He ended up in her bedroom, sitting down on the side of her bed and ruffling his hair with his right hand, still lost in thought when a glow from over his shoulder stole his attention. He glanced behind him and saw her open laptop, having just lit up due to the slight jostling his sitting must have caused it, and for a moment he wondered what it was doing there, since he hadn't seen her use it all day. Then he decided to ignore it and go back to staring at the floor.

But then the thing started beeping, and he turned around and peered at the screen to try to figure out what it was doing. Upon inspection, he figured out that someone was trying to "call" her computer, as if it were a phone - which was bizarre - and he watched the little notifications from something called "Skype" until the call ended and the images went away. Once the screen was clear, it displayed her background photo, which was different from the one he remembered from his early days here. This picture was of a younger version of herself, a little bit rounder in her cheeks and slightly paler, sitting on the same couch that was in her living room today, holding a tiny little blue bundle of a baby and sitting next to an elderly lady that he assumed was her grandmother.

As he stared at the picture, suddenly he was intrigued. She must have had more pictures on there somewhere, and he suddenly wanted to see them all.

It never crossed his mind that she might object to him digging around on her computer, or that there might be things on there that she didn't necessarily want him to see. Instead, driven by his curiosity, he pulled the computer on his lap and started clumsily trying to navigate it. He was better with his phone than computers, not having had much time to practice with the latter.

He never found the elusive photos. Instead, what he first found was a folder filled with her college assignments, which he skimmed over with only moderate interest. After that, he found where she apparently stored her music, which resulted in a song playing that he couldn't figure out how to turn off. He ended up muting the speaker and continuing with his search, clicking on a folder that was titled innocuously enough but ended up completely distracting him and making him forget what he was looking for.

It was a folder of her writings. He knew, somewhat vaguely, that she was a writer. She didn't talk about it much and she always downplayed her talent, so he was curious to see if she was better than she claimed and what exactly she actually wrote about.

The first file was relatively small and he read through it quickly. It was some sort of story, or a part of one, about an injured man who ended up at the home of a girl whose perspective the story was written from. Immediately, he recognized the familiarity of such a storyline, and he started plowing through the other files in the folders in a sudden need to know what else she had written.

The files were like snippets of a bigger story, not yet fully interconnected the way that a novel would be, but all involving the same two characters and describing scenes that were incredibly familiar and also not. Changes to how they had actually occurred in real life were subtle and enough to make what he was reading fiction, but the similarities were what stirred him. Even more than that, the male character was, he realized, a perfect description of himself in all but name. The man even had a prosthetic arm that he couldn't remember getting due to memory loss from brain trauma he sustained in a war.

At first, he was confused. It didn't seem like she was trying to write an actual book, since nothing was in a particularly specific order, but he was stumped to figure out any other reason why she'd write such things. He abandoned trying to figure it out when he reached the final file, however, because it was a bit longer than the others and, as he could immediately tell, quite different from what he had read previously.

It described a hotel bathroom, a much nicer one than the one he had once had her half-naked and beneath him on the floor of in New York, and that was his first clue of the nature of what he was about to read. Heat started creeping up his neck once he reached the second paragraph, which described the two characters stumbling inside said bathroom and undressing each other. From there, reading the document became what was essentially taking a trip inside the more secretive places of Summer's mind and getting a firsthand description of how she saw him, what she wanted from him, and what she wanted to do to him.

None of it was particularly explicit, but it was detailed enough to make him read the words with a slightly open mouth and quickening pulse. The previous files had focused on emotional, subtle themes, making the physical and sexual ones of this one a shock, and while he knew that she was attracted to him and liked his appearance, he couldn't have quite known exactly how enthusiastic she evidently was about the prospect of intimacy. If "intimacy" adequately described what her character was doing to his while kneeling from a shower floor.

He wasn't typically one to blush, but it was impossible to not feel like his head was on fire by the time he finished the document. Unable to stop himself, he started reading it again, and he was so befuddled by it all that he didn't hear Summer walk inside the room or unsuspectingly and casually ask what was so intriguing for him on her computer.

He only realized her proximity when she walked to his side and glanced down over his shoulder to see for herself what had captured his attention so wholly. He tried to clear the screen but, being technologically challenged in addition to being in no state to properly function thanks to what he had just read, there was no stopping what happened next.

She screeched out a curse he'd never heard her say before and then all but tackled the laptop, closing it with a loud crack and accidentally knocking it off of her bed and down to the floor. Then she covered her face with her hands and started pacing, mumbling incoherently into her hands, and it took him a minute for his brain to catch up with exactly what had just happened.

Then she turned around and dropped her hands, revealing a face so red and embarrassed that it was even worse than Steve's when they'd caught him and Natasha together. "You must think I'm a freak, oh my God. It's not what it looks like, I swear. I'm not a... whatever it looks like I am, I'm not."

He stared at her, still sitting on the bed, face blank despite the fact that underneath he was one step away from grabbing her and bringing her fiction to life.

"I just - I write random things, to get them out of my system, and, uh, I usually delete it afterwards and I meant to delete that one too because I swear that's not the kind of thing I normally write. I don't do the fifty shades of whatever thing. And you probably have no idea what that is. Oh my God. This is horrible. I just - I've been super frustrated and..."

At first, he was amused by her rambling and embarrassment - he couldn't help it. She was adorable when she was flustered. But then he realized that she was on the verge of crying.

"... I can't stand it when people read what I write half the time anyway, so this is basically my worst nightmare, and if you just keep sitting there staring at me I'm going to jump straight out my window."

Now she was actually crying. And Bucky suddenly felt like a jerk.

She turned around again, covering her face with her hands, and he finally got up from the bed, horrified at how terribly this was going and how utterly wrong she had it all. He cautiously reached out his hand to her shoulder and said quietly, "Summer, stop. Please, stop crying."

She shook her head and tried to also shake him off. "Nope. Can't. You don't understand how awful this is for me."

Undeterred, he moved his hand to her waist instead of her shoulder and replied, "You haven't asked me what I thought of it."

"I don't need to. I can tell by the look on your face how weird you think I am now."

He rolled his eyes slightly and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Then he drew a breath and replied, "Then maybe my face isn't what you should be looking at."

Before she could ask what he meant by that, his arm slid around her waist and pulled her against him, making sure her hips were pressed directly into his, and he hoped that would be enough to put an end to her ridiculous self-doubt.

Sniffling a little, she slowly turned her head to look at him from over her shoulder. She wiped at her eyes with her hand as her more normal blush colored her cheeks. "Oh."

He then took her wrist and turned her around, making her face him, and he said quietly, "I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd cry."

She shook her head and muttered, "I do that sometimes when I'm so embarrassed I want to die."

He moved her hair behind her ear and replied, "You shouldn't be." When she scoffed, he added, "You're good. I didn't know you were that good."

She eyed him warily. "I hope you aren't making fun of me."

He narrowed his eyes as if offended that she'd think such a thing. "I'm not."

Then she paused, looking down and cringing a little before peeking back up at him and asking, "Did you... read the whole thing?"

He nodded. She winced. "Twice."

She winced again, her painful flush returning to her face. "Oh, God..."

He tipped her chin up with his hand and leaned down, brushing his lips against hers before murmuring, "I like your imagination."

She groaned a little as his lips pressed against hers, breaking away a moment later to mutter, "This is still the most embarrassing thing ever."

Then, to his slight disappointment, she slipped out of his arms and turned away, walking towards her bedroom door in the boots that had to be killing her feet by now. He followed her silently, and to his relief, she was only walking to the door to close it. He waited until it was shut and she had turned back around to invade her space once more, pressing her back to the door and earning a surprised gasp from her lips in the process. She looked up at him a bit questioningly just before his hand diverted her gaze, moving to the doorknob and twisting the lock. He watched her eyes widen slightly and throat move as she swallowed before looking back up at him. "Uh..."

He wanted to ask her if her mouth really watered whenever he took his shirt off, like the story had said. He wanted to ask her about all the other details from it and ask if they were literary embellishments or the truth, but asking her anything like that now would only add to her embarrassment and be counter-productive. So he kept his questions to himself and kissed her instead, with all the hunger she hadn't meant to stoke by writing something that hadn't been meant for his eyes but had reached them anyway. She didn't resist, eagerly kissing him back, and within moments, he was walking her back to her bed.

They separated only to fall back on the bed, Summer first and then him next, one of her hands guiding him back to her lips while the other went to her own leg, towards the zipper of her boot. His hand covered hers and made her stop as he murmured against her lips, "Not yet."

She huffed a little and he trailed his kisses down to her neck as she asked, "What is it with you and these boots? Not that I'm complaining, but..."

She moaned a little as he nipped at the places he'd learned were the most sensitive of her neck, and then he raised his head, looking first at her lips and then her eyes as something occurred to him. At this point, after reading what he'd read and taking such an intimate look inside of her head in the process, he sort of owed her something.

While she looked at him in slight puzzlement, he leaned in and brushed his lips over her ear, softly speaking the same French sentence that he'd said on their first date and tormented her with ever since. He felt her shiver as he spoke, and after, when he drew back, she blinked a few times and asked shakily, "Did you just say something new or was that the same thing you said before?"

"Same," he said, kissing her jaw. "And it means," his hand slid from her hip down her leg, "that you look beautiful," his lips brushed hers and she trembled, "but that I'd rather see you in these," his hand curled around her leather-clad calf as he looked into her eyes, "and nothing else."

The sound that she made was something between a whimper, a whine, and a moan, and it made him grin with satisfaction. He pulled back slightly to watch her gape at him and struggle for words before finally asking, "You... that's what you said? On our date?"

He nodded, relishing her reaction and quite happy with his decision to withhold the translation until now.

She smiled. "Really?"

He almost laughed at her. "Yes."

The brief catch of her lip between her teeth was his only warning before she all but pounced on him, her embarrassment from earlier now an afterthought as she pushed him down on the bed and crawled over him, and from there, it was a half-mad and fully perfect spiral into chaos. Her boots stayed on but her dress came half off, his shirt was an early casualty, and they wreaked havoc on her sheets with the constant push and pull, for once blissfully free of any interruptions.

He had been on a mission to get her dress all the way off despite the belt making it slightly difficult to do so, but he gave up in favor of letting her push him so that he was half-sitting against the headboard and in perfect position to set her mouth to his chest. His eyes closed and his hand was at home in her hair, while her kisses turned into more courageous swipes of her tongue and nips of her teeth, moving lower, slowly, teasing the fire within and building it beyond his control. His eyes opened when he felt hands pulling at his jeans and lips dragging down his stomach, and his hand tightening slightly in her hair prompted her to look up him.

He opened his mouth but she swiftly shot back up and kissed him before he could say a word, holding him down when he tried to regain control by flipping them over. Of course, he could have overpowered her and flipped them with next to no effort, but he let her have her way, looking up at her with slightly wide eyes as her hands finished undoing and pushing down his jeans. He saw a tinge of anxiety in her gaze but the heat behind it overpowered it, and one more kiss to his lips sent another spark of heat racing down his spine.

One last thought materialized in his brain and came out in a disjointed rush of words. "You... we're supposed to... slow..."

"We've waited long enough, at least for this. Relax," she whispered against his mouth before slipping down, kissing down his jaw to his neck as he watched her go, suddenly feeling young for the first time, as far as he could remember, due to his sudden cluelessness as far as what the hell to do with himself, and specifically, his left arm.

Summer worked her way back down him like she fully knew what she was doing - maybe she did, or maybe she was faking, he didn't know - and his anticipation was on the verge of combustion as he jerked his arm up, then down, nearly panicking for a moment before throwing it back behind his head and gripping the back of his own hair with his metal hand, keeping it safely away from the woman currently trailing her tongue so close to where he wanted it that he had to close his eyes and tense his jaw to keep from groaning aloud with need.

But then, only a few seconds later, a warmth engulfed him. His eyes sprung wide and his mouth fell open, a sound foreign to his ears flying from his lips as his head fell back helplessly against the wood behind it.

The rest was a blur of heat and pure, desperate pleasure that made him feel genuinely happy to be alive again.

* * *

><p>For the rest of her years, Summer knew, she would never forget the look on his face or the sounds he made, and she would never forget the way they made her feel.<p>

It may not have been his first intimate encounter with a woman, but due to the circumstances, it may as well have been, and she was sure that was the reason why he was so wide-eyed, so seemingly shocked at what he was capable of feeling under the right touch. It brought an extra depth to a moment that would have been special still without it, and helped her push through her lack of confidence in her abilities and very limited experience. She let herself be impressed with her own bravery just long enough to finally get somewhere with him without a ringing phone or a knock on the door, and watching and feeling and hearing him fall apart under her touch was its own reward.

It hadn't taken long - understandably - but there was already an ache taking root in her jaw when she sat back, ignoring the mild pain in favor of looking over the panting and delirious pile of loose and happy super soldier in her bed. He'd slid down the headboard at some point, his metal hand never leaving its place in his own hair, and as she moved to lay down next to him, she decided to go ahead and take a moment to be proud of her herself. Maybe she was finally growing up after all.

"So," she said, curling up at his side and looking up at his for-once relaxed face a bit shyly, "did girls do that in the 40's?"

Her voice made his eyes flutter open, blinking a few times before taking a deep breath and raking his hand through his messy hair. "I don't remember." Then he shifted so that he could look at her, and when he did, her stomach fluttered at the satisfied, slightly sleepy look in his eye.

"Good, then you can't compare me to anyone yet," she smiled. He almost rolled his eyes at that, just before turning on his side to face her fully. She closed her eyes as he pulled her against him and kissed her, more softly than before, but still full of heat that reminded her painfully of her own unmet needs.

The kiss grew deeper as his hands wandered once more, his right one slipping down her legs towards her boots - she owed her sister in law a great debt for making her buy those things, and she was still in shock over the translation she had gotten at long last - then moving back up to run over her thighs, under the dress still trying to cling to her despite most of the top of it being yanked down. Her heart started pounding anew when his fingers easily pulled and slid her panties down, tossing the fabric somewhere out of sight as she opened her eyes and let him place her on her back. Though they were still more relaxed than she'd ever seen them, his eyes burned as they gazed down upon her. Then his hand was at her breast, teasing her as he brought his lips to her ear and said something indecipherable. She couldn't even tell what language it was, though it sounded like a smoother version of Russian, and after he started trailing kisses down her neck, she asked breathlessly, "Do I get to know what that meant?"

"Your turn," he mumbled against her skin, steadily working his way down.

She gulped and decided that Bucky stumbling across her personal literary ramblings hadn't been such a bad thing after all.

**A/N: ... So yeah, this is a far cry from what I used to write, but hopefully it's enough to still have some impact. And if not, then, well, at least this chapter has Mark facing a bit of justice, which was kind of fun to write. Anywho, my thanks and love to all of you who read, faved, followed, and/or reviewed this story, you're all the best and I adore you. My updates are getting kind of weird, I think for awhile I stuck to Mondays but then I got impatient and now it's always on different days but it's still once a week, so I have no idea. I'll probably update next Wednesday or Thursday lol. Til then, have an e-hug :D Oh, and my usual thanks to midnightwings96 for being amazing as always :D**


	8. Chapter 8

When Bucky opened his eyes the following morning, two things immediately struck him. First, he had awoken peacefully for the first time in a very, very long time. Second, he had actually slept, and he couldn't remember having had a single dream in the process.

Blinking in slight confusion, wondering how in the world he had managed this, he shifted in the bed a little bit and realized that Summer was still curled up against him and his left arm was slung carelessly over her middle. He slowly pulled it away from her, knowing how heavy and therefore uncomfortable it might have been for her, then glanced over her towards her nightstand, where her digital clock told him that it was just shy of six in the morning. He had slept for a solid and uninterrupted six hours, which was absolutely unprecedented.

A little bewildered by this, he silently pushed the sheets back and then stared for a moment at himself, confused for half a second until the night's events came flooding back into his mind. Then he looked back at Summer, passed out still in her half-torn off dress, and he had to swallow down the sudden urge to tear it off entirely and wake her up in a way that she would probably never forget.

But he had to leave soon, and that couldn't be helped. Making himself tear his eyes away from her, he slipped out of bed, grabbed his clothes and the duffel bag he'd stashed in the corner of her room, then headed to her bathroom.

Feeling rested was a strange sensation, and his thoughts were less chaotic and more organized than they normally were as he showered on autopilot. It was nice to not have to start with the water cold to wake him up fully, and even nicer to have the last night to think over and replay in his head rather than nightmares and dreams that he didn't want. How Summer had gone from profoundly embarrassed to, in his eyes, pure vixen in a matter of moments, and how she had completely disarmed him, made him remember what it was like to let go and simply feel...

And he hadn't hurt her. Nothing bad had happened. No flashbacks, no broken furniture, no unintentional bruises, nothing.

He had to wonder if she could possibly understand what that meant to him, the magnitude of what she had given him. He just hoped that he'd given some of it back. The way that she'd clawed at his hair and moaned into her pillow to keep quiet told him that he had at least repaid the pleasure she'd given him, and her sleepy kisses and shy but sweet gaze were the last things he remembered before sleep had taken them both.

If he could have, he would have spent the whole morning thinking on those memories and plotting how to make more, but instead, after his shower was over, he found himself faced with preparing for the day ahead. Inside his bag was a tactical uniform provided by Steve, wherever he'd gotten it from, and every other piece of equipment he would need for later, including one that he was having a particularly hard time coming to grips with, but he chose to ignore it for the time being.

He'd gotten the pants and a plain black t-shirt on, leaving the rest of the suit for later, when he heard a soft knock at the door. Not thinking of the open bag at his feet, he reached out and opened the door to find a tired and yawning Summer on the other side, wearing his black button down shirt and little else, her hair a wreck strewn across her shoulders. In other words, she looked perfect.

"Not trying to leave without saying goodbye, are you?" she asked, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. He shook his head, not prepared for the sort of effect seeing her in his clothes had on him, stepping aside while she bypassed him in favor of grabbing her toothbrush off the sink and turning on the faucet. If she was perturbed at all by his watching her brush her teeth, she didn't act like it.

Afterwards, she replaced her toothbrush and then turned around, looking him over before sighing, "So you really do have to go."

He nodded, watching as she frowned and then reached behind her to grab a hairbrush from the sink before hopping up on it. She tugged down his shirt when it rode up on her hips some, then started brushing through her tangled dark locks as she asked, "When will I see you again?"

"I'm not sure," he replied, feeling a magnetic pull bring him closer to her.

While his hand attached itself to her outer leg and the inches between them diminished, Summer asked, "Think you'll have super secret business down here a lot?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

She sighed a little, brushing the back of her hair and replying, "This long distance thing seriously sucks."

He looked up in her eyes as she then set the hairbrush aside, and his hand curled around her hip and nudged her closer as he replied, "Then come back with me."

She smiled, shaking her head slightly. "Very funny."

"I'm serious."

Her smile faded slightly and she placed her hand on his cheek, quietly saying, "If it was that simple, I'd do it in a heartbeat."

He was about to protest more when she silenced them both by pulling him forward and kissing him. He wasn't yet done trying to convince her, but he gave in for the time being, nudging her legs apart to stand between them and pull her fully against him as he took over the kiss. She happily yielded, and when he broke away after a long moment, brushing his lips across her jaw, she asked quietly, "Are there a bunch of guns and grenades and stuff in that bag?"

"No, those are in my trunk," he replied, taking a handful of her hair in his left hand and pulling her head back so he could place kisses across her neck.

"Oh," she replied in a half-gasp. "Good to know..."

He made a noncommittal noise as he started suckling on her skin, making her groan before she muttered, "Why do you always do this before you leave? Makeup only covers up so much..."

"That's the point," he murmured, leaving several reminders along the side of her neck and down towards her shoulder before she pulled him back up and kissed his lips.

He was reluctant to let her go, but after a few moments she pulled away and asked quietly, "You hungry?" His eyes flashed a little as they dropped down her body and then back up to her face, and she amended with a grin, "For food. You should probably eat before you go off on your super secret adventures."

His hand playing idly with the hem of his shirt where it ended on her, he simply continued to look at her, enjoying the way he could still make her squirm and blush just from prolonged eye contact. In fact, after last night, she seemed to blush even more deeply than usual, casting her eyes to floor eventually to escape his gaze. When she did, he noticed her expression become curious just before, to his chagrin, she slid away from him and hopped off the counter.

Something from his bag had caught her eye, and she carefully reached down to pick it up. It was the thing he didn't want to think about, and he suddenly felt mildly uncomfortable as she looked it over.

"Is this... your same mask as from before?" she asked quietly, turning it over, looking at it without the discomfort he was currently feeling.

"No."

She glanced up at him and then said, "I guess... you have to wear it since you're... kind of... wanted?"

"Kind of" was putting it mildly. HYDRA's leftovers weren't the only ones looking for him. Tony Stark was technically harboring a fugitive by letting him stay in his tower, and Steve had crossed that line a long time ago, and so had Summer herself. "Yeah."

She nodded and handed the mask back to him. "Sometimes I forget that having you here in my house is kind of a felony."

He barely heard her, too busy half-glaring at the mask in his hands. He understood the reasons for having to wear it, but a rather large part of him would rather smash his fist through his own face than cover it up the way HYDRA had.

Then her hand covered his, and she took the mask from his grip before dropping it back into his bag. She then stepped closer to him and placed her arms around his neck, looking up into his eyes as she said, "It's not you. You know that."

He nodded half-heartedly, his rare good mood almost derailed by the mask and the unwanted memories that it brought. But she pressed her lips to his, and he had to wonder how it was that he could instantly feel a little better from such a simple touch.

After pulling away, she smiled and said, "So. Breakfast. Come on. David will be asleep for another few hours, so it's just you and me."

That brightened him up rather quickly. She shot him a grin and then turned around, opening the door and heading out to her kitchen, and he followed just far away enough to be able to fully watch her hips as she went.

* * *

><p>Her decision to take a page out of the romantic comedy playbook and sashay around Bucky in his shirt and little else had worked out perfectly up until she learned the hard way exactly how distracting he found it.<p>

As it was, trying to competently cook a man breakfast while said man lurked behind her and did everything in his power to try to make her screw up and burn something was a uniquely testing experience. She could handle the hand wandering along her waist and the maddening little kisses to her neck - barely - but she'd slapped his hand with a spatula when he tried to sneakily unbutton his shirt on her, which wasn't a very effective defense, because it only held him at bay for a moment before he simply slid his hand between the buttons in search of flesh that his kneading and light squeezing of left her a bit breathless. She gave up protesting, however, when she remembered that he would be leaving very soon and he really deserved the luxury of uninterrupted groping, if that was what he wanted, and she wasn't in much of a state to truly protest anyway.

After barely escaping ruining his food, she managed to wrangle them both to the table, where they ate in a pleasant silence punctuated by his occasional still-heated glances and her answering blushes. She let herself be distracted by him to avoid thinking about his impending departure and wondering how long it would be until she'd see him again. It would have been hard enough, but then last night had happened, and she was pretty sure that the world had spun off of its axis a tiny bit. And they hadn't even actually slept together. The universe might implode when that happened.

And yet, she wasn't sure if she'd ever look at his mouth the same way again. Watching him eat now seemed vulgar somehow, thanks to what her mind did when she'd see his tongue dart out or his lips close around a fork, and it took all of her self control to not squirm in her seat. But how could she not, now that she knew what that mouth was capable of?

At first, she had wondered very silently if he would even remember what to do, but apparently it was one of those things a straight man never forgot, even when they'd had their brain fried multiple times. It had ended up being worth every bit of the effort of swallowing her nervousness and mild embarrassment. Now she finally had a level of understanding for certain things that she had been lacking before, and she was withholding the urge to jump on the roof and scream jubilantly about it.

Instead, she kept her screams to herself and snapped back to reality, slightly, when she realized that he was done eating and she was done trying to pretend to be hungry that early in the morning. Acting out of habit, she got up and rounded the table, reaching out to take his plate and deposit it in the sink, only to yelp and break out into a smile when he grabbed her wrist and pulled her across his lap. She tried to think of something witty to say but he wasted no time in devouring her lips, holding her in place with his left arm while his right hand instantly started messing with her buttons again. She could feel his heightened desires, let loose just a bit more thanks to last night, and the way that he kissed her and touched her let her know that he didn't want to leave without at least some degree of a repeat performance.

But, she quickly discovered, their luck of avoiding interruptions had officially ran its course, and his phone rang in his pocket just in time to still his wandering hand as it had been sliding up purposefully between her legs. She smiled at the way he grimaced and straightened up, leaning back in his seat and taking the phone out to briefly glance at it before silencing the call and turning back to her.

"Have to go?" she guessed, running her fingertips through his hair as he nodded in reply. "Well... text me when you're done with whatever you're doing, so I don't worry."

He nodded but grinned a little as he answered, "Don't worry about me."

"I will worry. Worrying's what I do," she grinned back. "So don't forget to text me."

He nodded again, pulling her forward for another kiss. It was too short, and all too soon he was unwillingly easing her from his lap and standing up. He left briefly to grab his belongings from her bathroom, and when he came back, she hadn't moved from the table, wishing that she didn't have to say goodbye again so soon.

But, reality was reality. She sighed when their eyes met and then walked with him to the door. When they reached it, she turned around and pulled him into a hug. It was nice how he now immediately sank into her embraces and pulled her in closer, as opposed to his earlier, awkward responses to her hugs the first few times she'd ever given them. They had come a remarkably long way since then.

"I'm glad you came early to see us," she said, chin resting on his shoulder. "And thank you for beating the crap out of Mark yesterday. It was weirdly awesome to watch."

She felt his chuckle more than she heard it, and then she pulled away and smiled up at him as she said, "You know that what you did was basically avenge me, right? You know what that makes you?"

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Don't say it."

Her grinned widened. "I'm gonna say it."

"Summer..."

"My Avenger."

He groaned and she giggled, but she couldn't get anymore teasing in before he kissed her quiet. She enjoyed it while it lingered, which was as long as he could let it, before he let her go and kissed her forehead. Against her will, she then stepped aside so that he could reach the door. Then she spotted his jacket on the table and grabbed it, handing it over to him and grumbling, "You're about to walk out into below-freezing weather without a jacket. Maybe I do need to move in with you just to make sure you don't catch pneumonia."

"I don't think I can," he said quietly, taking the jacket and setting down his bag to slide it on.

"Well. Still."

The corners of his lips quirked up a little at that, and he leaned in to place one more kiss on her lips before picking up his bag once more and then opening the door. "Stay safe."

She nodded at his now-standard parting words and replied, "You too."

He nodded, then turned and headed out into the snow. She took the doorknob in her hand and ignored the very cold wind blowing on her bare legs as she watched him go, leaning against the doorframe and noting how it kept getting harder to say goodbye with each time one of them had to walk away. It was enough to make her wonder if maybe, just maybe, she really could seriously consider moving to New York.

Could she?

She was freezing by the time his "borrowed" car crunched its way through the snow and out of her sight. She sighed and closed the door, leaning her back against it and taking the collar of his shirt between her fingers, playing with the material as she brought it to her nose to enjoy his lingering scent on it while it lasted.

* * *

><p>It was a particularly cold night in Alexandria, Virginia, but Bucky didn't feel it much as he stood on a hilltop obscured by white-covered trees and about a foot of snow. In front of him, down the hill and a stark contrast against the mostly bare landscape was a sprawling, state of the art medical complex. The last employees had left the now-closed facility a few hours ago, but apparently, underneath the building lay the reason why he was here.<p>

"Tell me again why this is supposed to be HYDRA?" he asked the man who stood next to him, dressed in his darker uniform but with the distinctive stars obscured the same way the shield on his back was. It was a little pointless, but nonetheless, Steve was trying to avoid recognition from anyone.

"Got the coordinates from one of the leaked files," Steve replied. "And the neurological wing of the complex is named after Pierce."

He twitched a little at the sound of the man's name, but he ignored the feeling and kept staring ahead.

"I know you're sick of me asking, but -"

"_Yes_, I can handle it, and _yes_, I'm fine," Bucky interrupted, not bothering to mask the annoyance in his tone.

"I just want to make sure that you know there's no shame in changing your mind."

"Not changing my mind," he replied. There were many warring emotions simmering under the surface - anxiety, of both the good and bad kind, unease, anticipation, but no reluctance or doubt.

"We could go in there and find nothing," Steve added, "or we could find a lot. Just hope you're ready for either one."

Bucky didn't reply to this, briefly preoccupied by the distinct familiarity of the current situation - standing in the snow next to Steve, looking out over the site of their next mission. What he wasn't sure of was if it was familiar due to his own unreliable memory or due to the stories Steve had told him, but either way, it took him a moment to shake the feeling off.

Natasha's voice in their ears told them that she'd successfully disabled the security feed from within the facility, and that was their cue to begin.

He slipped on the mask and a pair of night-vision goggles, hiding a slight shudder when both were in place. It was too familiar and would have brought him to a very bad place mentally had he not reminded himself to stay calm and breathe, that this time it was he himself who chose to put it on, to be here, to fight. It was his choice, and he wasn't changing his mind.

He glanced at Steve, expecting him to be wearing a grim or at least slightly disturbed expressing at facing him like this again, but his expectation was not met. Steve simply gave him a nod and asked, "Ready?"

He nodded to the affirmative, and then it was time to go.

Sam followed them from behind, muttering something about being invisible and definitely not needing his own pep talk at all, while the three of them disappeared into the night.

* * *

><p>"You were only Internet famous for like a week. Highly disappointing."<p>

Summer rolled her eyes, holding her phone to her ear while stirring a pot of soup and answering her brother, "Yeah, I know. They stopped posting death threats after like three days and they all forgot about me like a month ago. Which I'm happy about."

"Meh. I was hoping someone would do some investigative reporting. Since my own investigation is about as successful as your novel writing."

"Hey!" she immediately protested, "I'll have you know that I have been writing lately."

"Writing what? The next great Twilight/Spongebob crossover fanfic?"

"Ew," she wrinkled her nose. "Is that a thing?"

"I don't know, but I'd ship Bella and Squidward. They're perfect for each other. Same expressions and everything."

"My gosh, don't say 'ship'. Doctors don't say that," she cringed. "And no. It's not that."

"What's it about?"

She paused and briefly closed her eyes when she realized that she couldn't actually tell him much about it, and anyway, why did she say anything in the first place? "Uh... a guy... and a girl... but it's nothing serious and I've just written little things out of boredom." Boredom and unspeakable frustration, though at least Bucky had temporarily eased both with his visit.

"Uh huh. So the usual, then. You know you're gonna need to get a job soon if you want to, you know, keep eating while you don't write a book."

"Yes, I'm aware," she rolled her eyes.

"And you know that I work at a hospital that I could easily get you a job at if you moved out here."

"I know," she replied in a less clipped tone.

"You could probably even get a boyfriend that you wouldn't have to hide from me."

She grinned and shook her head. "I don't think that one's changing anytime soon, regardless of where I live."

Paul groaned and eventually replied, "Of course."

Still stirring more out of habit than necessity, Summer suddenly wondered what Paul would say if she told him that she was half-seriously thinking about moving to New York. She almost blurted it out just so he could freak out and talk her out of it, but at the last minute, she bit her tongue. It probably wouldn't happen anyway - no sense in getting wailed at for an hour about it.

"So it's getting serious then?"

She bit her lip, considering her potential answers before replying, "I think it sort of always has been."

"Well, you know that traditionally, when relationships get serious, that's generally when you introduce them to the family. Or at least give the family their name."

She smiled and replied, "Well, I'm nothing if not unconventional."

She heard a burdened sigh on the other end, followed by a muttered, "I found an actual gray hair on my head yesterday. And it's your fault."

She snickered and went on to talk to him for the better part of the night, using his conversation as a means of curbing the urge to worry and overthink until she received the text from Bucky that he'd promised her.

But, long after she had hung up and ran out of things to occupy her mind and deter worry with, she still hadn't gotten the text.

* * *

><p>The first shot that Bucky fired that night was silent and flew smoothly into the head of a HYDRA guard after he and Steve had descended silently down a stairwell towards the basement of the northeast wing of the facility. The guard had been rounding the corner towards the stairs, and Bucky had fired before Steve could throw his shield and neutralize the man in a less lethal way.<p>

Steve glanced over his shoulder at the masked, slightly off-putting face of his friend and nodded. "Thanks."

Bucky acknowledged his words with a slight nod, stepping over the body and only glancing down at it to take note of the tiny but distinct HYDRA pin on the guard's collar. Apparently, here, they weren't even bothering trying to hide their true allegiances.

Feeling nothing one way or the other about taking that particular life, he followed Steve down the corridor, their footsteps silent and path empty until they reached a corner that led to another stairwell. Two more guards waited there, but Steve acted first this time, his shield hitting one in the head and then bouncing directly into the other's head, knocking them both out before they could so much as touch their weapons. Bucky stifled annoyance at the men being left alive, but followed Steve down the second stairwell anyway. Natasha and Sam were supposed to be waiting for them at the bottom of this one.

At the end of the stairs lay the basement, and a part of the facility that was locked behind a very large, very locked steel door. Four guards lay crumpled near it, courtesy mostly of Natasha, who he and Steve found affixing an explosive to the door.

"Took you guys long enough," she muttered quietly. "Senior citizens really do move slow."

Ignoring her jibe, Steve asked, "How many hostiles are we expecting in there?"

"Six heat signatures," she replied, stepping back from the door and adding, "On my count..."

Bucky watched as the door blew open a few seconds later, steeling himself for whatever lay inside and staring down the scope of his gun after impulsively tearing the goggles from his eyes and letting them clatter to the floor. They were little more than an afterthought as they stormed inside the room.

Everything happened in a blink of an eye, like a movie being rushed to the end credits, and that was what he had expected. Shots rang out immediately in their direction and the room erupted in instant but very brief chaos; Natasha took out two shooters with just her guns first, Bucky shot another in the head as they tried to dive for cover, and Sam covered Steve as he took on a very stupid hostile and felled him with a single punch to his head. Of the two remaining hostiles, one hid and the other tried to engage in a firefight, but was shot through the shoulder by Natasha and dropped with a loud cry. All in all, it was over in less than two minutes.

Steve immediately went after the hiding man, and for the first time since entering the room, Bucky allowed himself the chance to actually look at it. It wasn't just a room; it was a lab, and a rather large one. Equipment and machines were everywhere, all gleaming and new and lit up with data and calculations. Screens covered the walls, all flickering after the fight that had just ended seconds earlier, but a small hallway that was almost hidden in the far southeast corner of the room caught his eye more than anything else.

To his left, Steve was grabbing the remaining live and/or conscious operative, a man in a white lab coat, and shoving him in a chair while Natasha busied herself with retrieving data at what looked to be the main computer. Sam hovered near Steve, as usual, and the only one who noticed Bucky wandering off towards the hallway was Natasha.

He heard her discreetly tell Sam to follow him, but he ignored it as he raised his gun in anticipation of whatever awaited down the hallway. What he found were rooms, one after another, all empty of people, all containing various sorts of equipment that varied in how nightmarish they were. He kicked in the doors of each room and peered inside before moving on. Some contained nothing but large glass boxes, big enough to fit a human being in, while others held vials and vials of liquids, stores of chemicals and what looked like medical instruments. A few rooms resembled operating rooms.

A sick, knowing feeling settled in the pit of his gut as he neared the dead end of the hallway. The final room was guarded in a way that the others were not, behind a steel door of its own, and his heart was racing uncomfortably as he stared at it blankly.

Suddenly a hand shot in front of him and slid a security badge in front of a scanner on the door, and Bucky glanced up to find Steve, not Sam, as the culprit. He looked at the other man in slight surprise, but Steve merely looked at him with a gentle but serious expression as he reminded him, "I'm with you, remember?"

Bucky nodded, hoping the dread creeping up into his throat would prove to be unjustified. Then Steve pushed the door open, and Bucky held his breath.

The room was larger than the others, but it only contained a single item. It was large and stood all the way against the wall, tall enough to reach the low ceiling but narrow enough to leave plenty of space between itself and the walls. It was a tube-shaped chamber, and recognition instantly flitted behind Bucky's eyes as he let the barrel of his gun face the floor.

This was probably not the only cryo-chamber that HYDRA had owned. It was probably not the only one that they'd ever shoved him in. But as he stood there inching closer to it, staring at the dark exterior and the circle-shaped window near the top of the tube, a flash of memories flew dizzyingly through his mind and almost made him sick with the force behind it.

It was blurry and disjointed, but he remembered being shoved into the chamber, weak and confused and terrified after having had his mind ripped away from him. He suddenly remembered the stark white walls of the corridor and the doors of all the rooms, seeing them pass him by as he lay shivering and literally melting on a stretcher, being moved from one room to the other as he slowly regained consciousness near the end of a carefully executed thaw. He could nearly feel his long hair, icy and dripping on his bare shoulders as he blinked awake, facing the same terrifying state of confusion that he had entered his freeze in, waiting for instructions, waiting for something, anything, anyone, to tell him who he was and what he was supposed to do.

He barely heard Steve softly calling his name, asking if he was all right. His vision became dim and tunnel-like, he couldn't breathe, and he could feel the cold creeping up on him again, starting at his toes and his fingertips and quickly encompassing his entire being.

He was officially compromised. But he was also far too gone to recognize that or care.

Panic ringing in his ears, he stormed out of the room and rushed down the hallway, no longer in control of his actions or movements as flashes and horrors continued to assault his consciousness, building and piling until he felt cornered by his own fractured mind.

When he reached the end of the hallway and looked out at the lab with wide eyes and ears that could barely hear, his vision instantly focused on the white-coated man currently being interrogated by Natasha. The man looked up at Bucky once and paled with obvious and sinking fear and recognition.

And Bucky recognized him as well.

He marched towards the chair, knocking Natasha away with a backhanded punch from his metal hand that he didn't think about, sending her flying into a table. Sam backed off immediately, and Steve's yelling fell on deaf ears as Bucky grabbed the man by the throat with his left hand while he tore off his mask with his right.

The man's face exploded with even more fear, and Bucky didn't say a word as he squeezed his fist and cut off the man's oxygen. He had nothing to say, no coherent thoughts, no agenda aside from killing the man he could suddenly remember poking and prodding him, jabbing him with needles and even helping to throw him into the cryo-chamber. His mind was blank and his mission was singular and simple - kill the man like he had never been allowed to do before.

Meanwhile, as Bucky choked the man to death, Steve was shouting at nearly the top of his lungs just a few inches behind him.

"Bucky! Let go! We need him!"

Recovered from her own attack, Natasha braced herself against the table and looked from the dying HYDRA operative to Steve before warningly saying. "Steve, he's losing it."

Steve kept shouting, to no avail, and Natasha could only yield to Steve for so long before she decided to make the decision for him and step into action. She leapt up on the table and then jumped off, landing on Bucky's shoulders like she once had in the middle of a highway, but this time she immediately placed her wrists on either side of his neck and shocked him with her charges.

Bucky let go at the unexpected electrocution and stumbled back, away from the man who fell limply out of the chair to the floor as soon as he let him go. The charges weren't enough to incapacitate him like most of Natasha's targets, so he was able to reach up and grab her by the arm and throw her to the ground as he staggered away, looking around wildly and trying to understand what the hell had just happened. The shocks had somewhat awakened him from his previous delirium, but now he was caught between reality and the images in his head, each yanking him in different directions and resulting in pure confusion and fear as he looked around the room.

Steve was suddenly in front of him, gripping his upper arms and saying frantic words that Bucky didn't understand. Sam announced from his place next to the operative on the floor that the man was dead, and Natasha was back on her feet, gun drawn and pointed at Bucky out of well-justified caution.

He'd killed their only remaining and best source of information, possibly making the entire mission pointless. He realized this in a fog as he stared blankly at Steve, his eyes nearly as dead and lost as they had been six months ago, and the more Steve spoke, the more he showed his fear that Bucky was slipping away.

Driven by two opposite, warring impulses and thus able to follow neither, Bucky pushed Steve away harshly and turned on his heel, storming out of the lab. His head hurt, ached with images and voices that were growing brighter and louder by the second, and he could only focus on one word to guide his actions: out. He needed to get out.

Steve tried to follow him, to make him stop, but turning around once to punch him hard in the face seemed to drive the point home to leave him alone. From there, Bucky slipped out of the now-familiar facility alone, disappeared into a surrounding thicket of trees, and eventually ended up on a street where he stole a parked car and started driving on autopilot, having no conscious idea of where he was going and simply trying to find his way back to reality in the aftermath of what had happened.

If he had been functioning at his normal capacity, he might have known that a not-quite dead HYDRA guard lying on the floor had seen him as he had hurried to escape the facility, recognized him without his mask, and by communicating to a few off-site comrades set into motion a series of events that would result in the night ending in a way that Bucky could not currently imagine, let alone anticipate or thwart.

* * *

><p>While Summer put David to bed, she focused on reading him his usual story about a knight slaying a dragon and made a concerted effort to not let her mind drift to the text that she was still waiting for. It was a losing battle, however, because her mind had been running rampant with worry regardless of what she did, and it was not a comforting thought to know that this was something she was just going to have to get used to.<p>

But she was hardly the only girl in the world to have to deal with such a thing. Military wives had been doing it for decades, on a much higher level than she ever would. Bucky was much more indestructible than the average soldier, but she worried far more for his mental state than his physical one. As well as he seemed to be holding it together these days, she had no doubt how truly delicate that balance was.

Still, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand, reading until the little boy curled up at her side was was fast asleep. She then sighed and checked her phone in her pocket for the thousandth time before shoving it back in and setting the book aside, kissing David's forehead as she settled him in and slipped away.

Wishing pointlessly that Bucky could be waiting for her in her bedroom this night like he had been the night before, she flipped off the lights and quietly stepped out into the hallway. She planned on walking straight into her room to climb under the covers and obsessively check her phone in peace, but her kitchen light caught her eye as she paused and peered down the hall in slight confusion. She had turned off that light nearly half an hour ago. Hadn't she?

Shrugging to herself, she headed down the hallway, towards the kitchen, hoping that her memory wasn't going on the fritz, only to stop dead in her tracks at the sight of the very man who had never texted her like he'd promised, curled up in a ball against her front door and holding his head in his hands.

Her mind went blank with shock and her heart sank. She just stood there, staring at the slightly pathetic sight that he was, praying that something horrible hadn't happened to cause this while she finally willed her feet to take her to him. A thousand questions raced through her head and a thousand horrible possible answers joined them, but she shoved the thoughts away as she slid to her knees in front of him, hesitating only briefly before placing her hands gently on his wrists.

"Bucky?" she called softly, her touch as gentle and cautious as her voice. "What happened? Are you all right?"

He didn't answer or even move. She quickly looked him over, finding no points of injury on him, and continuing to speak softly to him as she eased his hands away from his lowered head. "Bucky..."

He finally lifted his head up some as she took both of his hands in hers and gave them a light, reassuring squeeze. Slowly, his eyes met hers, and her heart dropped a little more at how red and exhausted they were. They were also startlingly vacant, and she started to fear the worst in terms of what had led him to this.

He blinked a few times, trying to focus on her, and she drew a breath when recognition started to fill his empty eyes.

"Summer," he muttered, his voice sounding like it was grinding against sandpaper.

She nodded, bringing one of her hands to his cheek. "Yeah. It's me. You're okay. Whatever happened, you're okay."

His right hand reached up slightly shakily to cover her hand and press it closer against his face, while his eyes stayed locked on hers. "I shouldn't have gone."

His admission sent more alarms ringing in her mind, but she didn't let it show as she nodded and edged closer to him. "It's all right, Bucky. Is everyone okay? Is Steve okay?" He nodded, and she breathed a very quiet sigh of relief. "Can you tell me what happened? You don't have to if you don't want to, but..."

He was silent for awhile after she trailed off, but she recognized his expression as the one he always had when he was gathering his words, trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to.

But it wasn't Bucky or Summer who eventually broke the silence. It was the rumble and hum of a helicopter slowly growing louder and louder as it moved closer to the house that made his eyes finally snap fully into reality. He was on his feet with a blinding, terrifying speed, all but running to her living room window and peering out while she watched in confusion and sudden fear.

"Bucky? Is everything oka-"

He turned around suddenly and with fiercely wide and serious eyes said, "Go get your son and run."

Her eyes widened and fear became shock. "What?!"

"Grab him and run towards the trees, now - go!"

It was the first time she had ever heard him shout. She immediately leapt to her feet and and ran down the hallway, while the helicopter's engine grew steadily louder in sync with the panic clawing its way up her spine. She burst into David's room and drew him up into her arms frantically, blanket and all, and then turned and ran back the way that she'd came, never once doubting the urgency of what she was doing.

Bucky was at her front door waiting for her. But, the moment that his metal arm curled protectively around her shoulders just before they made a run for it, a deafening, blinding flash of light overcame her sight and sent her flying forward. Her arms tightened instinctively like a vice around the little boy in her arms, and two much larger arms than hers pulled her almost brutally tightly into the body beside hers as the explosion rent her house in two.

The last thing she heard before she hit the ground and lost consciousness under the protective shield of a super soldier's body was the sound of a second explosion and her home, and everything that she had ever owned, being reduced to little more than worthless rubble.

**A/N: dun dun dun :) hey, the crap had to hit the fan eventually, right? And I do love leaving everybody with a cliffhanger, if this qualifies as one. I guess it kinda does. Anyway, sorry about the shorter-than-usual length of this one, but my most eventful chapters seem to be shorter than the more boring ones for some reason. Thank you to all of you lovely readers and reviewers and followed, you are all the best :D also, thanks go midnightwings96 for having helped me with this chapter and the action-y stuff by assuring me that I had not, in fact, written the giant steaming pile of garbage that I thought it was (I hate writing action, utterly despise it). So with all of that said, I love you all, and I will see you in another week :D **


	9. Chapter 9

Cleaning up post-mission was a lot more of an ordeal without SHIELD there to take care of it. Where Natasha was used to slipping in and slipping out without having to give much thought to the bodies and wreckage that would result, this time she had to linger with the rest of her "team" and help see to such slightly mundane matters. What made it possible at all was Stark's money and some helpful connections with the CIA. Otherwise, she would likely be riding a tractor with Clint rather than hunting down what was left of HYDRA. Though that option seemed slightly more attractive currently due to the black eye she was sporting courtesy of the man she had warned Steve about his lack of readiness, to no avail.

Steve was pacing the lab floor, calling Bucky's phone every few minutes, and Natasha could only watch for so long before rolling her eyes and pointing out, "I think he made it clear that he wants to be left alone."

"And now is the worst time for him to be alone," Steve muttered, continuing to pace.

She sighed. "I know you mean well, Steve, but trust me - sometimes, being alone is the best thing in a situation like this."

Steve finally came to a halt, letting out a breath and staring down at his phone as he fell silent for a few moments. "I wonder if he went to Summer's house." Then he was calling her cellphone, and Natasha was trying not to roll her eyes again. Steve would be an absolute wreck if he ever had a teenage daughter someday.

A moment later, he frowned and lowered his phone. "She's not answering either."

Biting back a remark about the possibility of Bucky seeking unconventional means of therapy following a traumatic event, she pulled out her own phone and decided to check something as more of an afterthought than anything. She didn't expect to find anything actually concerning, but she did.

She looked up at Steve with furrowed brows and said, "Her tracker's dead."

Steve mirrored her confused look. "Who's tracker?"

"Summer's."

"What tracker?"

"A hair clip I gave her."

Steve looked like he had to physically restrain himself from asking why on earth Natasha would find it necessary to put a tracker on the woman, but his expression quickly grew worried. "It's dead?"

She nodded. "Lost the signal ten minutes ago."

Steve only took a few seconds before he muttered a quiet curse and headed straight out of the lab. Natasha stayed behind with Sam, preferring to stay behind with that mess rather than whatever sort Steve was about to run into.

* * *

><p>Bucky was almost glad that Summer and her boy had instantly lost consciousness following the blast. It made it easier for him to carry them as he ran through the trees as fast as he could, cutting through the forest with dizzying speed as his mind reeled in the wake of what had happened. She was limp in his arms, her hair a nearly-black curtain whipping around her face with each of his steps, but her own arms somehow managed to stay secured around her son despite it all.<p>

Nobody saw the Winter Soldier, dressed much like the weapon he'd once been, metal arm occasionally gleaming in the moonlight when it caught him, running with the utmost determination and speed in order to save two lives rather than take them. The instincts and the skill that had been drilled into him for years for very different reasons now came to life to save and protect, but his mind was racing too fast to grasp the difference of it all.

Somehow, somebody in HYDRA had followed him to her house. As he ran, surely they were scouring the wreckage, and they would find nothing but the remains of her home. They would know that all three of them had escaped alive, and they would simply continue their hunt to either snuff out a loose end or reclaim a lost weapon. It didn't matter why they were hunting him, really, especially not now.

He couldn't run forever, both literally and figuratively. David was wrapped up in a blanket but Summer was not - she was in just a camisole and thin pajama pants, and the temperatures were below freezing. To make matters worse, he had no idea where to go or which direction to run in to get her somewhere safe.

In fact, the very idea was laughable. He was the reason why she wasn't safe in the first place, the reason why everything she owned was now smoke and ash.

But he had to get her somewhere safe. Once she was safe, then she could wake up and hate him, and he wouldn't fault her in the least.

He ran until he reached a dirt road. He stuck to the tree line that ran parallel and eventually happened upon a paved road that led to a gas station and a couple of closed shops. He made a beeline for the first motel that came into view, slipping into the darkness of night and breaking into a room with almost no effort.

By the time he laid both mother and child down on the single bed afforded by the tiny, dim room, he was exhausted, but not so much due to the exertion of running what he guessed to be about fifteen miles while carrying them. His mind was still in a fog and there was a splitting ache in his head that had first appeared back at the HYDRA lab and had only grown exponentially worse following the unexpected destruction.

But he ignored the pain and the fog as he leaned over Summer's limp body, cringing at the dust and the ash that lightly covered her face and hair as he quickly brought the covers up to warm her chilled skin. Then he brought his right hand to her cheek and spoke her name, trying to rouse her. When his efforts yielded no faults, he pulled her into his arms, favoring the flesh one rather than the cold other one, and held her tight against him to help warm her as he continued to try to wake her.

As he gently tried to wipe some of the dirt from her face with his hand, she began to stir slightly. His stomach clenched unpleasantly and he dreaded the moment that he had to watch realization dawn within her eyes and hatred cloud the affection he was used to seeing there.

He held his breath as her eyes fluttered open, looking up confusedly at the ceiling before settling on him and focusing as much they could.

"Bucky..."

His jaw clenched but he couldn't get any words out. She blinked rapidly and furrowed her brows and asked with a gravelly voice, "Where am I?"

"A motel," he replied softly. "I'm not sure where. Fifteen miles or so from your house."

She stared at him for a moment in pure confusion. Then her eyes widened suddenly and she shot up and out of his arms, far too fast for her own head, half-gasping, "David - David - where is he, is he -"

"Right next to you," Bucky quickly assured her, making her lay back down before she made herself faint. She looked to her side and closed her eyes in relief at the sight of her boy, but he knew the relief would fade in a matter of minutes.

And it did. Her eyes opened and then widened, turning and meeting his as she muttered, "... My house."

He nodded, bracing himself for whatever would come next.

* * *

><p>Her head hurt, her eyes hurt, and she was fairly sure that she couldn't hear anything out of her left ear, but all of that paled in comparison to the horror slowly dawning on her lagging mind.<p>

The last thing she remembered was flying towards the ground as explosions rocked her house.

"Is it gone?" she asked in a tiny voice, though she didn't really have to ask. Bucky's face gave it away.

He nodded. "Yeah."

_Gone_. Just like that. The home that her grandmother had worked three jobs to buy decades ago and held everything that Summer owned, and a great many things that both her mother and grandmother had owned. All of it gone. She couldn't go back. Her shelter, her routine, her home, was gone.

She was vaguely aware of Bucky making her sit up and slightly more aware of the short, heaving breaths that burned as she tried to force them into unwilling lungs. He was holding her by her forearms, saying a bunch of words that she really couldn't hear, though she did catch "hyperventilate" amid the indistinct blur of sounds.

Just as she felt herself losing consciousness, Bucky gave her a firm, almost painful shake, and the force of it made her gasp and stop hyperventilating just long enough to keep from fainting.

"Summer, look at me. Breathe. Slowly."

She stared at him, some part of her brain noticing the desperation behind his eyes, and she followed his instructions. After awhile, her head started to feel less like it was about to separate and float away from her shoulders like a helium balloon, and she was able to focus on wrestling her panic into something more manageable.

It was okay. She was alive, David was alive, and Bucky was all right. In the end, that was all that mattered.

And if that wasn't exactly true, she didn't have to think about it right then.

When her breathing slowed down and Bucky seemed satisfied that she wasn't going to lose it, she felt his hands fall slowly from her arms and saw his eyes become pained as he muttered, "I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "You pulled us out, you saved us -"

"I led them to you," he grumbled. "Again."

"Bucky -"

"I'm sorry."

This time his apology came out as a self-loathing half-whisper. She felt tears prickling in her eyes at the sheer guilt she saw in his. She gulped down her racing emotions and said shakily, "I chose this, Bucky. You have nothing to be sorry for."

It was true. She'd never been forced into anything. What she gained, what she lost - it all ultimately fell back on her and her choices. And she knew that things like this were a distinct possibility when dating a very hunted man.

Bucky's vehement disagreement with her words took a backseat to David stirring next to her. She quickly turned her attention from Bucky to her son, shifting in the bed so that she was hovering slightly over him as he rolled from his side to his back and began opening his eyes. He was still wrapped up in his blanket, and the thought occurred to her that the blanket might be the only material thing that had survived her house.

"David? Sweetie," she called softly, knowing full well what the poor boy's reaction would be to waking up in a strange place in the middle of the night. He seemed to ignore her words, sitting up and looking around in confusion before starting to whimper slightly. She pulled him into a tight hug before he could start crying.

As she held him, she started to realize a few things. She would have to tell her brother what happened. She would need a new place to live. A new routine. Stability for the sake of David and his delicate mind. But now she wouldn't have a house that she owned, and her savings didn't have much life left in them. She would need to pay rent. She would need a job. Having a job meant needing childcare while she worked. Having that meant having a job that actually paid somewhat well.

Did she even have a truck to get to a job anymore?

She started crying long before she noticed the tears falling down her cheeks. It was all too much to process, too much to make sense of, and just the thought of telling her brother was enough on its own to make her freak out.

But the worst part of it all, the deepest, darkest feeling that settled beyond her ability to reach and ignore was the guilt. All of this had been her choice, and in the course of the six months since she had met Bucky, she had watched her son have a gun shoved at his temple and now, the only home that he had ever known was gone. It would have been hard enough for any kid to handle, but it was going to be an incredible challenge for a kid who needed routine and expectability and sameness to function at his highest potential. It could take him months to adjust to a new place, and if he had to adjust to daycare on top of that, it could very well end up being a nightmare.

And it was her fault. It was her fault for opening her home to a dangerous stranger, and her fault for getting attached to that stranger and giving him an enormous place in both of their lives. She had made the decision, for the first time since David's birth, to do something for her own sake and try to make her own existence a little less lonely and monotonous. And now David had to pay the price for that sliver of happiness she had tried to grasp.

As she nearly drowned in her own pit of self-loathing and convinced herself that she was the worst mother who had ever walked the earth, she distantly heard Bucky mumbling into his phone across the small room. She reached up a hand to wipe away her errant tears and sent a glance his way, only to feel new tears form at the helpless and distressed way that he was looking at her.

It wasn't easy, but she forced herself to stop crying. Perspective was key. All was not lost. Everyone was alive and well. They'd get through this one way or another. If there was anything she knew how to do, it was how to pick up and move on.

After she had willed the tears to end, a shuffling at her side drew her attention. She turned to find Bucky off the phone, kneeling at her side and looking at her with a gaze as tired as it was guilty as he said, "You two need to go to the hospital and get checked out. Just in case."

She nodded. "Okay."

"Steve said Sam would take you. He's the least... conspicuous."

She almost protested, much preferring Bucky to take her rather than a guy she'd only met once and hadn't really liked much when she had, but she guessed that there was logic in the choice. "Okay."

"They'll be here in a few minutes."

She nodded again. A part of her kind of desperately needed him to hug her, but she stuffed the need down and didn't say a word.

Then his gaze suddenly became more serious, even fierce, and he looked deep into her eyes as he said, "It's my fault this happened. And I hate it. I hate it. But I'm not gonna let it happen again. You're coming back to New York with me. You can argue and fight me but I don't care. You'll be safe there."

Though a part of her had warmed slightly at his heartfelt proclamation, she couldn't help but ask, "Will I?"

He nodded. "You're gonna live with us. I'm gonna keep you safe. I promise."

He sounded almost desperate to believe what he was saying, and as much as she wanted to believe too, she quietly replied, "Please don't make promises like that."

"But I mean it," he answered just as quietly.

She couldn't say anything back to that. She closed her eyes after he rose up to kiss her forehead, one arm wrapping around her to give her the hug that she wouldn't admit that she needed. She leaned into his embrace and took a deep breath, glad that at least he wasn't letting his obvious guilt drive himself away from her.

He might have been the catalyst to her loss, the choice she made that led her here, but despite that and her own tidal wave of guilt threatening to break over her head, she knew that she needed him now more than she ever had before.

* * *

><p>Time passed by in a mildly sickening blur that left her more and more tired and yet no closer to rest as it dragged on. The trip to the hospital took about two hours, and Sam was nice enough as he helped Summer through the process of lying to the doctors and nurses about why she was there. She told them that there had been a house fire, which was apparently a story that Steve had suggested, and both she and David were cleared of any concussions or other injuries. David handled being examined as well as he ever did, which was very poorly, and no amount of pleading or bribing made him any calmer or more compliant.<p>

When they were done, it was a relief. Once they were back in Sam's car, or whatever he was claiming was his car, David fell asleep nearly instantly and Summer slumped in the front passenger seat and let her mind run wild with questions that had been on the tip of her tongue for the last several hours.

"How am I gonna explain what happened to the police?" she wondered out loud. "I mean, my house blew up. I'm not that far into the sticks that nobody will notice."

"Steve's got a contact in the CIA who's taking care of it," Sam replied, eyes on the road. "Don't worry about dealing with the police."

She sighed and leaned her head back against the headrest, glancing at the driver and asking, "Are you used to this sort of thing?"

"Me?" He raised his eyebrows and chuckled. "Hell no. I'm just a regular soldier who ran into Captain America on my morning run and ended up doing stuff I never dreamed I would."

"Oh," she replied, a little surprised by that. She appreciated his lack of super-spy HYDRA/SHIELD experience, but she was no soldier and his being one made him infinitely more prepared to deal with this crap than she was. She was just a writer who barely wrote and a mother whose entire life was built around her son. A soldier was way more useful and a lot less clueless.

"Sucks that this happened to you," Sam added. "But on the bright side, now you get to live with all us cool kids."

She paused for a moment before furrowing her brows and asking, "... All of you? You mean... all of the Avengers or something?"

Sam glanced at her and asked, "He didn't tell you? Right now we're all at Tony Stark's tower. Well, not that I'm an Avenger, and they're not all there, but -"

Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. "Stark Tower? Stark Tower. That's where Bucky's taking me."

"I thought you knew," Sam half-grinned.

She shook her head and then closed her eyes, slumping back against the seat again. She'd been expecting some apartment like the one Steve and Bucky had occupied during her visit, not a freaking skyscraper crawling with tons and tons of people every single day, including a bunch of superheroes. She was starting to feel dizzy again.

Obviously Bucky was either too angry or too oblivious to have realized that this was something worth mentioning.

She made herself stop thinking about it to save her sanity, and by the time she had halfway successfully cleared her head, she looked around and realized they were in the middle of nowhere. "Where are we?"

"Almost to the airfield," Sam replied.

"Airfield?"

"Hell yeah," he grinned. "You're flying with Cap now. On Stark's dime."

Stifling a groan and wishing this was half as cool as it would be under any non-horrible circumstance, she stared out the window and tried not to feel a bit miffed that she wasn't getting the chance to say goodbye to her home, even if it was just rubble now. She'd gotten a text from Steve at the hospital - her phone had been in her pocket and therefore survived the blast - explaining that grounds would be searched throughly for fibers and other such things, and that if anything was found that had survived it would be sent to her. That was also when she'd found out that her truck had, in fact, not quite survived.

The safest thing to do, apparently, was get out of dodge as quickly as possible, and due to the nature of the attack, she wouldn't exactly be allowed to go traipsing through the wreckage anyway. There was nothing to be done about it, really, but she was still unhappy about it.

Then her thoughts turned to how she was going to keep David occupied on a plane - or anywhere - without his tablet or any of his toys. All of his beloved possessions were gone, and how could she expect him to understand that at his age?

Before she could work herself up into another crying fit, however, Sam brought the car to a stop in the midst of an open field. An unmarked private jet awaited them, and as he turned off the ignition, Sam explained, "Everyone's already onboard."

She nodded, glancing back at her sleeping son and hoping that he'd remain asleep during the jostling it would take to get him from the car to the jet. Thankfully, he did.

Walking up into the jet was an odd experience. It was stepping from one world into another, one that came with bottles of champagne and seats that looked way too comfortable to be on an aircraft. It definitely felt like a billionaire's private jet, not that she had any prior experience with one.

While she had been staring in a slight daze, Bucky had caught sight of her and suddenly filled her line of vision. She blinked at the change and realized he was speaking to her, but she missed nearly all what he said and just nodded as he led her towards the back of the jet. Clearly, her brain was not clear enough to function in much of a helpful way.

On the way back, she passed Steve and Natasha as they spoke in hushed tones and stood next to one another. Steve gave her a gentle nod and Natasha didn't look at her quite as coldly as she was used to, but Summer didn't have much to think on the matter. She was suddenly realizing how horribly tired she was, and she only managed the barest of nods back.

Wordlessly, Bucky helped her settle David into a reclined seat near the tail of the plane. She covered him up with his blanket and thanked the heavens that he had stayed asleep before straightening and turned her tired eyes on the man before her. He looked even worse than she felt, possibly.

They sat in two seats opposite David's, buckled themselves in, and waited for the short flight to begin. She immediately closed her eyes and laid her head on his shoulder, feeling sleep beg for her surrender as she muttered softly, "You didn't tell me you live with Tony Stark now."

She felt him lean his head on hers, and she relished the comfort of the simple touch as he asked, "... Is that all right?"

She gave a light shrug. "I guess. I don't know. I can't think."

"Try to sleep," he murmured, and she felt him place a gentle kiss in her hair.

She couldn't help but comply. There was a lot to think about, a lot to take on, and a lot to do in the coming days, but for now, all she could do was take the small comfort offered by the presence of the man beside her and let sleep take her.

* * *

><p>Bucky stared forward, not moving an inch from Summer's side and not letting his eyes close any longer than was necessary to blink. He was exhausted and everything within him screamed for sleep, but after being so physically close to the essence of his nightmares earlier that night, he found himself fighting sleep with every last ounce of strength left in him. It was a far cry from his rare peaceful slumber from the night before.<p>

He remained deep within the swirling fog of his mind until movement in front of him got his attention. He looked up to find Steve sitting down across from him, keeping quiet for the sake of the sleeping passengers. Bucky immediately looked away, opting to stare holes into the floor of the jet, rather than face the man he inexplicably felt like he had disappointed earlier.

He'd done a good job of avoiding his "team" until now. He remained silent and didn't look up when he heard Steve ask quietly, "You okay?"

Steve could ask some really dumb questions sometimes. He'd point it out if he weren't so dead-set on not speaking.

"Look... I hope you don't beat yourself up too much."

Now Bucky glanced up at the other man, a bit incredulously.

"That particular facility... was a very bad first mission for you to take on. I take the responsibility for that. If you want to blame someone, blame me."

Bucky nearly laughed bitterly. Steve knew he wouldn't blame him. Who honestly would?

"But we did get some useful information. It'll take some time to comb through it all, but..."

As Steve trailed off, Bucky looked away. He supposed that he should be glad that the mission hadn't been entirely useless, but he couldn't take much comfort in that fact. If the info led to new leads and new missions, he doubted that he would be invited along again. What good was he?

"How's she doing?" Steve asked quietly, motioning to the sleeping woman curled at Bucky's side.

Bucky gave a very slight shrug and muttered, "Not that great." It was true. He could tell how devastated she was, and how much she didn't want him to know. Even in her exhausted, still-shocked state, she didn't want to worsen his guilt. And that somehow worsened it more than open bitterness and hostility would have.

Steve nodded and then said, "I'm sorry this happened. We'll get her to the tower and... figure things out from there. I'll make sure she has whatever help she needs."

Bucky clung to his silence, afraid he'd snap and start railing at Steve for no coherent reason if he spoke. Thankfully, Steve seemed to sense his need for solitude, and in another moment, Steve got up and left with a parting pat to his shoulder.

When he sensed movement in his peripheral vision a few moments later, he opened his mouth to tell Steve to take the hint and leave, but then a swish of black and red appeared instead and settled down in the same seat Steve had sat in. He stared at Natasha blankly, his insides twisting a little bit more when his eyes flickered to the damage he'd inflicted on her face.

She simply leaned back, nonplussed, and said, "Guilt's a bitch, isn't it."

His eyes darkened and he prepared a diatribe in his head that would surely make her leave her alone, but she spoke again before he could get a word out.

"You're not the only one with guilt. One time I watched Steve literally cry because of the guilt he has for not looking for you after you fell. We all have guilt. Some of us more than others."

His hostility waned rather quickly as he processed her words. A slight furrow came upon his brows as he listened to the next set of words that she spoke.

"I warned her to think twice before she dove in. She knew the risks that come with you being... you. She chose to take them anyway. I don't expect you to listen to a word I say, but you should take it from someone who knows - save your guilt for your own choices."

"They wouldn't have gone to her house if I hadn't led them there," he muttered.

"Were you in your right mind when you went there?" she asked knowingly.

Of course he wasn't. He had barely realized where he was until Summer had found him in a ball against her door and roused him from his confused and troubled state.

"Guilt will eat you alive if you let it," she added, saying the words in a way that left little doubt in his mind that she knew very intimately what she was speaking of. "And the risks she's taken won't be worth much if you do."

A few seconds later, she stood up and began to make her way back to the middle of the jet. Before she left, he muttered a quiet, "Sorry about the eye."

She paused in the corner of his vision and replied, "Not the worst I've taken from you."

She said it lightly, almost as if she found some kind of dark humor in that fact. Then she was gone, leaving him to sit there and contemplate her words.

He barely moved for the rest of the flight, trying to reconcile what she said with what he felt and finding no real balance between the two. But one thing that was becoming increasingly clear was how utterly sick and tired he was of guilt.

Maybe Natasha was right. But maybe it didn't truly matter one way or the other if she was.

* * *

><p>She awoke with a start, and for nearly five full minutes, she had no idea where she was.<p>

She was in a large bedroom that made her old one look like it was from the Stone Age. It was minimalist and had the feel of a hotel room in its lack of personal touch, but the bed was gigantic and everything was too sleek to be any kind of normal room. Heart slightly racing, she whipped her head from side to side as she tried to make sense of her surroundings, only fractionally calming down when she spotted David burrowed under the covers on the opposite side of the bed.

Scrambling to remember, she muttered to herself, "Where the hell am I..."

"You are on the thirty-sixth floor of Stark Tower in New York City, Ms. McAdams."

To her later shame, she squeaked and fell out of the bed at the first word spoken by the disembodied, bizarrely British, voice that seemed to flow from the ceiling. "What the actual f-"

"My apologies, Miss. I am JARVIS and I run many of the tower's operations. It is just shy of ten-thirty AM and you have been here for approximately four hours."

As she calmed down from her initial AI-induced meltdown, memories from the day prior finally came flooding back in full. She sighed, the heaviness of it all returning as she got up to her feet and ran a hand through her hair. She could already feel a headache coming on.

"Okay... well," she said, feeling ridiculous speaking to the ceiling, "can you maybe stay quiet because my son won't sleep for a month if he hears you and freaks out the way I just did."

"Absolutely, Ms. McAdams."

Blinking at the oddness of it all, Summer looked down at her slightly grimy pajamas and wondered if she'd find a bunch of generic clothes in the dresser that sat against the wall opposite the bed. It turned out to be empty, but she did find a new outfit sitting folded on top of the dresser, jeans and a black tank top. She grabbed it and then wandered cautiously to the bathroom adjoined to the room, halfway expecting some weird sci-fi bathroom with a golden toilet and a shower she'd have to poke at for an hour before she figured out how to turn it on. But, it turned out to be a pretty standard bathroom, to her relief, and she took the fastest shower of her life before putting on the borrowed clothes. The jeans were a bit short, so she assumed that they were on loan from Natasha.

David was stirring awake by the time she made it back out to the bedroom, and that ended the moderately peaceful portion of her morning. As soon as he got one look around the room, he was clinging to her side and fidgeting with unease that she wasn't sure how to manage without her usual tools. She flipped on the television mounted on the wall, searched for the remote for nearly ten full minutes, then gave up with a huff and scooped the boy up into her arms as she decided that she was way too hungry to deal with that crap.

And so, with wet hair, too-short jeans, and an anxious five year old attached to her front, she walked out of the room and down a surprisingly long hallway only to step out into a large living room area and immediately come face to face with Steve, Tony Stark, and Pepper Potts. They were standing near the kitchen area talking when she stepped into view and immediately brought a brief silence upon the room.

"Summer!" Steve chirped with intentional cheeriness. "You're up."

She nodded, eyes darting between Steve and the tower's owner. Her first thought was that he was a lot shorter in person than he looked on TV. "Uh..."

"And not a moment too soon," Tony said, leaning against the island. "You're just in time for the grand tour of Tony Stark's Orphanage for Lost and Confused Ex-Assassins and Their Mentally Questionable Girlfriends."

She stared at him for a moment, not offended but simply not at full enough brain capacity for a retort. Steve sighed heavily and grumbled, "Can you show some sensitivity for five seconds, Stark? I told you what happened to her."

"Yeah, house blown up. Been there." He glanced back at Summer and added, "Sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," she replied, moving towards the closest thing to a dining room table and trying to deposit David on it, but he was stuck to her like glue. She sighed and decided to stand there somewhat awkwardly. "Um... thanks for letting me come here. I don't want to be an... imposition, or..."

"Don't worry about it," Pepper quickly assured her, shutting Tony up before he could think about responding. She stepped closer, clad in a smart white suit with her strawberry hair back in a low ponytail, smiling in a way that seemed genuinely friendly as she said, "We have plenty of room here and it's no problem at all."

Summer nodded, a little surprised by how friendly she was being. "Thank you."

Pepper then looked at David as he still clung to his mother. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

"He's autistic," Summer explained, "and this is about the worst thing that could have happened to his routine. Usually he'd have at least his toys and his tablet to focus on, but..."

"I'm sure that I can find a tablet to lend you while you're here," Pepper assured her. "And on the twenty fifth floor there's a childcare center for our parent employees, so if you wanted, you could let him spend some time there. There's even a special needs room."

Before Summer could stutter out a thank you, Tony stepped closer and interrupted. "Speaking of that, I hear you need a job."

Summer turned her gaze to the billionaire, again struck by his stature (he had two inches on her tops), and she answered, "Uh... yeah, I guess I do, but -"

"Skills?"

She blinked. "I'm a writer, but -"

"Sweet, what have you written?"

"... Not much," she admitted with a slight cringe.

"Work history?"

Was this an interview? "Service industry."

"Burger flipping. Okay, and -"

" - Actually, I never flipped -"

"- Level of college reached?"

"Working on my bachelor's in creative writing," she replied, almost dizzy.

"What school?"

"The online University of -"

Tony outwardly cringed and grimaced. "I was afraid of that. Are you insane?"

She faltered at the unexpected query, and Pepper quickly interjected, "He doesn't mean that, he's just asking if -"

"No, I do mean it. You're dating the Winter Soldier. If you're a psychopath, I'd prefer to know before I hire you."

_Oh God,_ she thought, _it is an interview._

Before she could answer, Steve said, "I already told you, Stark, she's -"

"Let the potentially crazy lady answer for herself!" Tony said over his shoulder without taking his eyes off said potential crazy lady.

"I'm not crazy," she replied. "You both know the story from when I called you asking for you to give a message to him," she gestured to Steve. Then she grew a spark of courage and pointed out, "I mean, I get that I probably seem crazy to the average person, but you're letting him live here with you, so..."

"Yeah, not really happy about it though," Tony replied. "I don't usually let assassins who killed my parents stay under my roof."

She wasn't sure what to say for a moment. "... But you are."

"Still not happy about it."

Now wholly without a reply, Summer stood there awkwardly while Tony stared at her and Pepper focused on her hands clasped in front of her. Then, after the silence had gone on so long that it had surpassed awkward and entered into physically painful territory, Tony suddenly turned to Pepper and said, "So, does your assistant need their own assistant?"

"She already has one," Pepper replied.

"How about a second one?"

"I'm not sure she needs -"

"Great!" he smiled, turning back to Summer. "You can start Monday."

He then turned around and walked away, leaving Summer to gape at his retreating form and wonder if he was actually serious. Thankfully, Pepper quickly gave an exasperated chuckle and said, "Let me take a look at what we have open and make a few calls. I'll let you know by the end of the day."

_No big deal, just the CEO of one of the biggest corporations in the world personally looking for a job to squeeze you into_. "Okay. Wow. Thank you."

Pepper nodded. "And I'll see about the tablet, too. If you need help finding anything, just ask JARVIS."

Too dumbfounded to do anything but nod back, Summer then watched as Pepper told Steve goodbye and then left, leaving them alone. Suddenly feeling tired all over again, Summer plopped down at the table with David still stuck to her, looking up when Steve sat across from her. "Well, that was weird."

He grinned a little and replied, "Yeah, he takes some getting used to. How are you?"

She shrugged. "I don't really know yet. Okay, I guess. Things could obviously be a heck of a lot worse," she said, gesturing to her surroundings. "Where's Bucky?"

"Therapy," he replied. "Down in the basement."

"Oh," she nodded, hoping he wasn't in too bad of mental shape. "What exactly happened yesterday? Before the thing with me."

Steve frowned before giving her a brief overview of what happened, and at the mention of the cryo-tube and Bucky's subsequent meltdown, everything suddenly made a lot more sense.

"We must have missed somebody who saw him leave and had him followed. I can tell how hard he's taking it."

She sighed, hoping that Bucky wouldn't let this add to his already-crushing guilt issues, but he undoubtedly would. As she contemplated it all, her stomach suddenly growled very loudly, and she glanced up at Steve while cringing inside. He just smiled, and she looked down at her son's head on her shoulder and asked, "Hey, kiddo - you want to hang out with Captain America so I can get us some food?"

David replied by hugging her tighter. Not even Cap would do the trick, apparently. She sighed, then looked up at Steve and leaned her head back in resignation. She'd just have to figure out how to navigate a kitchen with a five year old clinging on to her.

"You know what, I'll fix you something."

Her eyes widened and she quickly began protesting. "Oh, no, no, you don't have to do that, really, I can -"

He waved her off and stood up. "Believe it or not, I'm pretty good at omelets. Not much else, really, but I've got those down."

And suddenly, Captain America was making her breakfast. She had a feeling that getting used to whatever this new, highly unexpected phase of her life would entail, it would involve accepting bizarre things such as this and just getting used to it.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, down in the basement, Bucky was glaring at his elderly therapist and preparing to fully take out all of his anger and frustration on him.<p>

"So, how did the mission go?"

Bucky didn't hesitate to snap as planned. "You're a quack."

The doctor didn't so much as blink. "All right. Explain."

"You shouldn't have let me go," Bucky muttered.

"I've explained to you several times that I am not here to 'let' you do anything or control your decisions. My purpose here is to -"

"What good are you if you know I'm not ready for something and you let me go do it anyway?" he interrupted angrily.

The doctor paused. "I suppose that answers my question as to how it went."

"The place was a lab. I remembered it. They used to keep me there. And I recognized a man we captured. I lost it and I killed him. And then I left, I didn't know where I was going, but I went to Summer's house, and they followed me there and they blew up her damn house."

It all came out in a rush through gritted teeth, and the doctor's expression quickly grew concerned. "Is she all right?"

"She wasn't hurt, but she's not all right. And it's my fault."

The doctor looked down at his notes, folded his hands and leaned forward slightly before beginning, "Mr. Barnes..."

"I've already heard why I shouldn't feel guilty. I know what you're going to say and I don't care. I only came here to tell you that you're useless and doing this is pointless."

Dr. Connor scribbled a few notes nonchalantly. "I see. But tell me, if I had urged you to avoid the mission at all costs and tried to force you to sit it out, would you have?" When Bucky said nothing and continued to merely glower, the doctor added, "Did I not advise caution? Did I not express my concerns that you needed more time to prepare yourself? I wanted you to wait because this is exactly what I feared - that you would disappoint yourself and cause a significant setback in your progress."

"What progress?" Bucky scoffed. "How am I getting any better when I still can't remember anything but HYDRA and I lose it this easily?"

"You do yourself no favors selling yourself short. I've watched you progress with each passing week, and frankly, this outburst you're in the middle of is a sort of progress as well. You are expressing your emotions rather than trying to mask them and bottle them up. This is much healthier."

Thinking the old man was absolutely nuts, Bucky gave a humorless laugh and crossed his arms.

"Did you sleep the night before the mission?"

Bucky paused before muttering, "Yes."

Dr. Connor looked up. "You did?"

"Yes," he answered through gritted teeth.

"How many hours?"

"Six."

"Very good. You took the meds?"

"No."

"Then what helped? That's more than double your typical nightly average."

"None of your business," Bucky grumbled.

The doctor didn't push the issue, scribbling a bit more before speaking again. "Well, I have a few suggestions. First, remember what we talked about before the mission. It was really a trial run. I tried to prepare you for possible failure or a non-ideal outcome. It is a setback, yes, but keep it in perspective. Don't let it derail the whole of your progress. No setback is worth it. Secondly, I believe that you need a hobby."

Bucky furrowed his brows. "A hobby?"

"Yes. Since you believe that you are not ready for fieldwork yet - and I would agree - you need something productive to fill your time. Sitting around idly will do nothing but hamper your recovery. Your hobby could be anything - it could be building things, art, dancing, even farming - that's been working very well for one of my other patients. Anything that holds your interest and gives you a clear goal to work towards, do it."

Bucky was torn for a moment between the urge to tell the man once again that he was a quack, and the unsettling feeling that accompanied the realization that he really didn't know what interested him. "I don't... really know what I would want to do."

"Then find out," the doctor suggested. "Go out, see the city. Go to an art museum. Go to a movie. Go fishing. Try different things, see what you enjoy."

Bucky stared for a moment, trying to mentally poke holes in the suggestion, but eventually he merely ended up muttering, "The one thing that I know I'm good at, I can't do."

The doctor nodded understandingly. "But I don't believe that will be true forever. It was only six months ago that you were still under HYDRA's control. These things take time. I've seen men subjected to far less torture and mind control than you take years to return to their jobs. It's not easy, but you must try to be patient. And ask Steve in the meantime if you can utilize your skills in other ways that would be helpful to your cause - training others, perhaps?"

Bucky shrugged noncommittally, letting his gaze hit the floor as he thought. He wasn't sure how much time had passed before the doctor spoke up again.

"The girl, how is she holding up?"

Bucky looked up at the mention of her and said, "She was sleeping when I came down here. I don't know yet."

"She's here?"

He nodded. "She's not safe anywhere else."

"I see. Unless you're still convinced of my uselessness, I would be willing to see her as well, if she feels like she could use the extra help."

Bucky nodded, only half-listening. He was too busy clinging to his fear that this whole mess would turn her against him.

"Would you care to share the memories you gained from the lab?"

Bucky sighed. He didn't care to do it, but he told the useless quack anyway.

* * *

><p>Later on, Summer built a quasi-picnic on the floor of her new bedroom. The TV was on cartoons and David had a new tablet to tinker with courtesy of the apparently very nice Pepper Potts, and she had an array of food spread out before him in the hopes that he would at least nibble on some of it, but so far, no such luck, just as she'd feared.<p>

He wanted his toys and his home, and her gentle explanations for why he could have neither had so far only served to make him cry and her feel worse. Steve's presence hadn't even been enough to make him crack a smile. The tablet was the only reason why he was somewhat calm at the moment, but she could not say the same for herself.

She needed to go out and buy them both clothes. She had no idea if she was supposed to buy her own food or if it was fine to just take whatever was already in the kitchen. She still hadn't called her brother to break the news that their grandmother's house was now smithereens. She also had not yet called her college to ask for a leave of absence due to narrowly escaping death - again - at the hands of neo-Nazis, but she really needed to, because there was no way she could focus on school in the middle of all of this.

But instead of doing any of that, she sat on the floor with her back to the floorboard of the bed, watching David not eat, and thinking about all the ways in which her current situation could end in further disaster. She jumped in surprise when she heard her door click open, then sighed in relief when it was Bucky who walked in. She half-expected it to be a robotic housekeeper like from the Jetsons.

He was quiet as he made his way to her, and she kept her eyes on the dark-screened phone in her hands as he slid down to sit next to her. For awhile, neither of them said anything, and the silence was comfortable. It only ended when her phone buzzed and made her jump again.

It was a text from her blissfully ignorant brother, probably quoting a Harry Potter line or making a new guess on the identity of her secret lover. She didn't slide the screen to find out. "I need to be an adult."

"What?"

She hadn't meant to say that out loud. Now she had to explain. "I need to tell my brother what happened. I need to call my school. I need to go shopping. I need to get my mail forwarded. I think my cell phone bill is even due too. I need to do all this crap and be an adult and instead I'm sitting here doing nothing except praying for him to just take a bite of food."

She glanced at Bucky to find him eyeing her slightly curiously, and she explained, "The times before when he's had big changes happen or his routine gets majorly thrown off, he refuses to eat. I've had to put him in the hospital before, when he went a week not eating and barely drinking. It was horrible. And he doesn't understand where his toys are and where his house is. I don't know what to do. And I really want to tell my brother because I need him right now, like a lot, but how do I even begin to explain it to him without telling him about you? And if I do tell him about you, he'll just blame you and hate you before he even meets you."

She knew she was rambling, but Bucky didn't try to stop her, so she kept right on going. "And on top of all that, I'm really freakin' pissed off at those Nazi dickheads right now. Do you know how pissed my grandma would be if she knew that Nazis - the same evil people who killed her husband - blew up her house?! She would go get her shotgun and hunt them down herself! And that's another thing - all my pictures of her and my parents were in that house. David's baby pictures too. The material stuff is just whatever, because I can get it all back eventually, but I can't get those pictures back. And the memories." Then she paused and looked up at Bucky with slight shame in her eyes and muttered, "And I'm sitting here complaining about memories to someone who doesn't even have most of theirs. I'm stupid and selfish and... stupid."

Then she was being pulled into a warm embrace, and she instantly melted into the hug as she continued to inwardly berate herself. She sighed and closed her eyes, hoping that her rant didn't make his guilt any worse.

"You're not," she heard him eventually reply.

They sat there like that, her head on his shoulder and their arms wrapped loosely around one another for awhile, to the soundtrack of Spongebob on the TV and various noises from David's borrowed tablet. As simple as it was, his presence and touch helped to center her focus enough to finally gather her wits enough to take on the day and everything she had to do in it.

Except call her brother. That one she would save for some undetermined time when she had the slightest clue how to break the news to him in a way that wouldn't result in him having a heart attack and calling the FBI.

Just when she was ready to peel herself away from her rather comfortable position, a semi-creepy automated British voice once again made her jump out of her skin.

"Miss McAdams, Miss Potts has asked me to inform you that a position is available in her office that you may be interested in."

David instantly came scrambling into her arms at the first word from JARVIS, looking around wildly for the source of the voice. After trying to explain to him what it was, she looked up at the ceiling and said, "Uh... Okay."

"If you are interested, her assistant would like to interview you at nine AM next Thursday. Shall I confirm the appointment?"

She'd never been an assistant before, but how hard could it be? It was simple stuff, she was pretty sure, and if it was just an elevator ride away, then that was as close to ideal as she was going to get. "Yeah... confirm, I guess."

"Right away, Miss."

Drawing a breath, she glanced at Bucky and muttered, "Now I really have to go shopping."

He answered her by placing a gentle kiss on her lips, which earned him a half-hearted glare from David before he scooted off of her lap and back to the floor. Summer let herself smile at that for a moment before stealing another kiss and then asking, "Want to come with me?"

His hesitation was instant. "I don't know if I should..."

"Well, I don't know if you should really sit around here all day after what happened yesterday," she replied. "And, it's, you know, a boyfriend requirement. Suffering through boring shopping trips." She smiled weakly, trying to convince him and pretty sure she wasn't doing a very good job of it.

"... Maybe," he finally muttered. She smiled and kissed him again before getting up to take a bathroom detour before heading out for her first and wholly unexciting shopping trip in NYC.

She left her phone on the floor next to Bucky, and after she re-emerged, she remained ignorant of how he stared at it for a moment before picking it up and pressing a few buttons before putting it back down where she'd left it.

* * *

><p>He was fairly sure that his idea was either very stupid or very necessary - there was no in between. But the idea began forming the moment that Summer had told him how much she needed her brother and then expressed how the main reason why she wouldn't reach out to him was due to how he may react to Bucky. And that was not acceptable.<p>

He was the reason her house blew up. The least he could do was make sure she had her only living family apart from David with her while she came to terms with the dramatically different new direction of her life.

And that was how he ended up looking up her brother's number on her phone and then punching it into his own phone before typing out a message addressed to it.

_You don't know me, but I know your sister and she needs you. She's safe and her son is safe but something happened and she's afraid to tell you_. Then he typed the address of Stark Tower, not mentioning the tower itself, and added that it was where she was staying. Then he hit send before he could change his mind.

Technically, he knew that he was probably not allowed to invite random doctors from California to a tower currently housing superheroes and ex-spies. He also knew, however, that he didn't particularly care what he was or wasn't allowed to do, particularly when it came to doing something for the welfare of the woman whose life he seemed to keep inadvertently making worse.

Maybe she could be his hobby while he figured out a different one. And the clear, obtainable goal would be to fix what he hadn't meant to break and see her happy and back on her feet. Hopefully, this was step one.

**A/N: And thus begins the New York/Avengers tower phase of the story :) and it just wouldn't have been right to have it happen in a pleasant, non-angsty, non-house blowing up way, so here we are :p Expect to see more Avengers in the future but nothing too crazy, since the focus of course will still be on our two main characters and large group scenes can get kind of tedious after awhile, but they'll all be around and it'll be fun. Sorry (but not really) for last week's cliffhanger, and my huge thanks to all of you readers and reviewers as always, I love you all tons and tons and bunches and bunches :D and midnightwings96, who helped point out several things in this chapter that would have made me look like an idiot had I not fixed them (seriously, my brain sometimes) and is just always awesome. I shall see you guys next week! :D **


	10. Chapter 10

It was a quiet morning on the 36th floor of Stark Tower, silent aside from the occasional clatter of forks against plates and the random sounds of a game playing from within David's hands. The boy sat at a table with four others, including his mother, who was already exhausted after making a veritable buffet of French toast for her new... roommates?

Seriously, making breakfast for genetically engineered soldiers was no small task. And Sam wasn't much better.

She ate her own food quietly, glancing at David's untouched plate - of course - and then at Bucky, who sat on her other side, inhaling his food. Steve had charmingly offered his compliments through his first mouthful, and after that, aside from a few words here and there, it had been a mostly silent affair. She assumed that this, her second morning at the tower, was how most of mornings would be. Definitely a change from her usual semi-solitary mornings, but not a bad change.

"Tell you what," Sam said, eating the last bite on his plate before looking across the table to her, "it sucks that you came here under these circumstances, but damn, it's good to have a woman's cooking." Then he glanced at Steve and added, "No offense to your omelets, Cap."

Steve shrugged him off, nodding his agreement, and Summer's coffee-awakened brain detected a grand opportunity to mess with the two men. She straightened her features to appear annoyed and replied to Sam, "What, so cooking is a woman's thing? You can't learn how to make French toast because you're a guy? Really? Or do you just think that a woman's place is in the kitchen?"

Sam's cheerful expression faltered, and Steve swallowed a large mouthful of food as slight horror suddenly dawned on his face. Even Bucky looked surprised, looking at her curiously as she forced herself to keep from bursting out laughing.

Sam finally replied, "I didn't mean it like that... I'm..."

She couldn't take it anymore. She cracked a grin and started laughing. "I am so messing with you. But the look on both your faces was priceless," she said, gesturing to Steve and Sam, who were both chuckling in relief.

As she laughed, she glanced at Bucky and felt an unexpected warmth at the small, appreciative grin that he wore on his face he lifted his coffee cup to his lips. Before she could make goo-goo eyes at him too long, Sam remarked, "Thanks for freaking me out at eight in the morning. Haven't even had half my coffee yet."

"You're welcome," she grinned, raising her cup in a mock toast.

"Hey," Steve shrugged, "at least you didn't call her a dame and ask her questions about fondue." When every adult at the table grew visibly confused, he shrugged again. "Long story."

Then a moment passed, and the previously very silent Bucky looked up from staring slightly intensely at his plate and repeated, "Fondue?"

Summer then looked to Steve, who looked like he was about to wave the question away before his expression suddenly turned slightly serious. "Do you remember that? You weren't there but I told you about it."

Bucky stared for another few seconds and then asked, "Does it have to do with the girl?"

Summer watched Steve's eyes take on a fleeting sadness as he nodded. "Peggy, yeah."

Sam turned curious eyes on Steve and asked, "Did you ask her out for fondue or something?"

"No," Steve sighed. "Howard Stark asked her if she wanted a 'late night fondue' and I thought that meant..." he gestured vaguely with his hand, aware of the little ears at the table.

Summer choked on the coffee she was sipping and tried to cover up her giggles with a cough. Sam laughed outright, and Steve rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I know, it's hilarious. And of course you would remember that, of all things, Bucky."

Bucky shrugged. "I think I laughed and said you were an idiot."

"Yep."

Sam raised an eyebrow and said, "Well, at least you finally got to have some fondue, seventy years later."

Now she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She glanced at Bucky, who then glanced at her, and there was something subtle in his eyes that made her look away with a slight blush. She could totally go for some fondue of her own.

But instead of dwelling on the finer points of liquid cheese and the almost adorable embarrassment on Steve's face, she checked her phone that laid in front of her and frowned a little. She hadn't heard from her brother since the day before, and that was very odd for him. She still hadn't told him about the house getting blown up or her current whereabouts, having occupied herself the day before with shopping and trying to make her new room semi-comfortable for David, but she knew she had to do it today. He needed to know, and she needed to stop putting it off.

So, she decided, she was officially not going to put it off anymore.

Later.

Maybe after lunch.

Once the fondue talk had run its course and all the plates were empty - minus David's, though he did eventually take a solitary bite - she started gathering them all up out of habit and taking them to the sink. The kitchen was so incredibly modern compared to what she was used to, and the single most attractive thing about it was the dishwasher. She'd never had one before, and the appliance inspired almost as much lust in her as the man who had brought her to the tower. Almost.

But as she went to rinse off the plates in the sink, they were suddenly snatched out of her hand, and she looked up to find Bucky as the culprit. He gave her a look like she should know the routine by now, and she smiled and shifted to the side as he flipped on the water.

She almost asked if he knew how to load a dishwasher, but she decided to keep the question to herself and lingered, leaning against the counter and wondering how someone who hadn't been allowed to be human for decades could be as amazing as he was.

The day before, he had relented from his initial protests and tagged along in disguise as she bought the essentials for herself and David - mostly clothes and other essentials, and some of the toys that David had lost in the explosion. After enduring that, she had used him to rearrange her room and move a smaller bed into it for David until he felt secure enough to sleep in a room of his own again. Bucky had carried the mattress in from an empty room like it weighed little more than a Dorito, and he hadn't complained when she made him move the furniture around multiple times when nothing felt right.

But, most importantly, he had stayed with her through her first night at the tower, and everything seemed a lot less intimidating and frightening when he was there to fall asleep on. He was gone when she woke up, but she'd expected that.

And now he was cleaning up for her after she had cooked, a habit of his, and she found that she simply could not get used to such treatment. It was far too opposite of what she'd had in the past. Surely he would just get comfortable after awhile and it would stop. Nobody was that perfect. Right?

"So, you knew all about fondue back in the day," she observed casually, her back to the counter as he dropped the plates into the empty dishwasher. Apparently he did know how to use it.

He gave her an indistinct look. "That's what he tells me."

"You've gotta remember some of it," she pressed. "I know I've asked before, but..."

"Why do you want to know?" he asked, genuinely puzzled, closing the dishwasher door.

"I don't know. Curious, I guess," she shrugged. "I've seen your pictures from back then. I'm sure you got plenty of... fondue."

She decided then that she may forever use that word as code whenever David was around. Bucky responded by turning off the tap and turning towards her. "I don't remember eating cheese and bread."

She rolled her eyes but smiled at him anyway, wishing he'd come a bit closer. She knew he probably wouldn't, though, because if there were others around, she'd noticed long ago, he kept his affections to himself. She was also getting the feeling that recent events had led to him backing off a bit physically, but she needed more than a day to determine that one.

"So, any plans today?" she asked, changing the subject.

He shrugged. "No."

"Me either," she sighed. "Aside from making stupid phone calls. I really need to call my brother."

Something flickered across his face at her words, but she thought she'd imagined it. She was wondering exactly what to do with the day when JARVIS piped up and made her nearly jump.

"Ms. McAdams, there is a bit of a scuffle taking place on the first floor between the staff and a Mr. Paul McAdams."

She blinked and then furrowed her brows, the words making no sense at first. "What?"

"A man claiming to be your brother is refusing to leave the building until he sees you."

Her eyes widened and she felt her jaw drop as her brain struggled to comprehend this latest bit of information. There were so many reasons why what the AI said was impossible that she almost laughed, but instead she stuttered, "Uh... wh-... um... but..."

"Might I suggest you head down to the first floor before security removes him from the premises?"

"Yeah," she answered the ceiling, "Okay.

Now it was time to panic.

"How did he know I'm here?" she asked nobody in particular, completely missing the slightly guilty look on Bucky's face. Then she looked up at him and asked, "Can you watch David?"

There was a flash of panic in his eyes but she didn't give him a chance to say no before she rushed off towards the elevator, mind suddenly working a mile a minute, thinking that it had to be a mistake. It just had to be. Unless Paul was secretly a super spy and had tracked her cell phone location, there was no way he could know where she was. She'd barely been there more than a day!

But, after she descended the many floors down to the first and then stepped into a small sea of mostly suit-clad other bodies, she was soon faced with the bizarre truth of the matter.

"I am not a stalker! Or a terrorist! Check my shoes, there's no bombs in there!"

Near the front doors, past the gigantic front desk, was her redheaded brother, being manhandled by three security guards and yelled at by a slightly overweight guy in a suit.

"I've never even heard of the girl you're saying lives here, and I run the security for the whole building," the guy in the suit replied.

She hurried forward and waved her arms around slightly stupidly. "That's me! He's okay! That's my brother."

The struggle momentarily ceased, and Paul looked at Summer with a mix of relief and something that gave her the impression that he wanted to kill her. The man in the suit turned his confused gaze to her and asked, "And who the hell are you?"

"I'm - uh... I'm on the thirty sixth floor," she said, hoping he'd know what that meant since he claimed to be head of security.

"Since when?"

She glanced nervously at Paul and muttered, "... Two nights ago."

"And who brought you there?"

"I did," came a distinct voice, and Summer cringed again and watched Paul's eyes widen exponentially as Steve marched up to the scene. "Is there a problem here?"

Suit-guy's demeanor instantly changed, and the security guys finally let go of Paul. "No, not all. Just trying to do my job and keep this building safe, which would be easier to do if someone kept me updated on who's living in it."

"Sorry, Mister... Happy," Steve frowned a little as he said the odd name. "She's with us. I'll take it from here."

The guy with the weird name threw his hands up, muttering something about his job and how he was going to lodge a major complaint with Stark later, but all Summer could focus on was the way that Paul was staring at Steve. His face told her that he hadn't quite fully grasped her association with the world's first superhero until that moment, and she prayed that he wouldn't freak out.

Yeah right. He was gonna lose it, just probably not over Steve. It was unavoidable.

Steve turned and smiled and Paul and held out his hand. "Steve Rogers."

"... Paul," he replied, shaking his hand a bit awkwardly. "This is already the weirdest day of my life."

Summer couldn't take it anymore. "Why are you here? How did you find me?"

Handshake over, Paul whipped his phone out of his pocket and waved it. "I got a weird text from a weird number saying something bad happened and you needed me and that this was where I could find you."

Her eyes widened and she snatched the phone from his hand, quickly and correctly guessing his passcode - "Expelliarmus", how predictable - and pulled up his text messages. One look at the text in question and she closed her eyes briefly and muttered, "Bucky..."

"Bucky?" Paul repeated. "Who's that? Is that the secret boyfriend? What kind of name is that?"

As she handed his phone back, Steve looked back and forth between them for a moment before saying, "Look... obviously, the two of you have a lot to talk about, so why don't we go upstairs and you can sit and... catch up."

And have a meltdown of epic proportions. Summer nodded and then she and Paul were following Captain America to the elevators. Her mind raced with the realization that she was going to have to pretty much spill everything, and before she could start panicking again, she heard Paul ask, "Where's David?"

"Upstairs. With... someone."

"Why are you in New York? And here?"

"It's a long story, okay, just... give me a few minutes to get my head together," she muttered, stepping into the elevator after Steve and genuinely trying to do so.

Then the three of them stood there silently as the elevator smoothly came to life. Summer stared at the upwards-moving floor numbers, trying to ignore the awkwardness in the air, only to have her highly uncalm thoughts interrupted by Paul asking, "Seriously, what kind of name is Bucky? Is it that one guy from American Idol like six years ago?"

She sighed. "Think more sixth grade history."

"Sixth grade... huh?"

She sighed again. "Just stop talking."

"Hey, don't get testy with me, kid. You haven't even given me a hug yet."

She sighed for a third time, nearly deprived of oxygen at this point, and asked, "How did you even get here so fast?"

"I told the hospital it was a family emergency and Sarah got her mom to come and stay with her while I caught a flight here," he explained.

"Just like that? You just pick up and come here?"

"Uh, yeah," he replied like she shouldn't even ask such a stupid question "So are you gonna tell me what bad thing happened and why I got that text?"

The elevator doors opened, saving Steve from being stuck with the two bickering siblings but condemning Summer to her inescapable fate as they stepped off and into the common living area that awaited them. She hoped that Bucky would have gone to his room, so that she could break the news to Paul easily - well, easily-ish - but apparently nothing that day was going to be easy.

Bucky was sitting on one of the couches across the room, David sitting next to him, and by the looks of it, they were playing something on his tablet together. Ordinarily, this sight would have made her feel warm and goofy, but the problem was that Bucky was wearing a t-shirt and his arm was slung over the back of the couch, shining rather brightly under the rays of sun shining in through the giant picture windows behind him.

One look and Paul skidded to a halt mid-step. Bucky looked up, first at Summer and then at the stranger at her side, and she looked nervously between the two of them, utterly useless for a moment.

Paul's vision was zeroed in with laser precision on the metal limb, and he did not appear to be breathing. He simply just stared ahead while the puzzle pieces surely fell in place in his head, and Summer poked him in the shoulder. "Um... Paul..."

"That's... that's... your... guy."

Summer glanced at Bucky, who had moved his arm as if it wasn't way too late for that, and then looked back to Paul, who was suddenly even paler than usual. "Yeah."

"You're dating... the... you're..."

"Paul..."

"He's... oh God..."

"Paul, sit down and breathe."

"But... Winter... S-"

She physically grabbed him by his shoulders and made him sit down in a chair as his breathing started to become shallow. "Paul, calm down. I can explain."

He laughed, and it sounded a bit crazed. "He shot JFK! Summer - he. Killed. A _president_."

"He killed a lot of people," she replied, a little bit disturbed by how easily she spoke those words, but she quickly shook it off. "But he was brainwashed. He's not a bad guy. He's a good guy. Remember reading about Captain America and the Howling Commandos in history class? Remember the one in the blue coat?"

Paul didn't hear her, too busy still staring at Bucky, who was watching the scene without a trace of amusement and looked very blank. This was in contrast to Sam, who had taken to standing next to Steve and watching like he was witnessing a bad but hilarious reality show take place live.

"But... but..."

"Paul," Summer sighed, "you're hyperventilating."

"Because Winter Soldier!" he exclaimed, pointing wildly. Summer cringed a little and then started searching around the room for a paper bag.

To her surprise, she actually found one, and immediately handed it to Paul. "Calm down before you pass out."

As Paul breathed in and out of the bag, Summer glanced at Bucky apologetically before remembering that he was the reason why Paul was here at all. She was still reeling a bit from the text she had read, and it shocked her to know that Bucky had thought of her and her feelings to the point of sneakily asking her brother to come here. If the timing wasn't so terribly inconvenient and if Paul wasn't mid-breakdown, she might have flung herself at him and given him a grateful hug.

After breathing in and out of the bag a few times, Paul lowered it and asked, "How did you even meet him? How - what - why?!"

"... I found him outside the house passed out and hurt. I helped him out."

Paul laughed again. "That doesn't explain all this!"

"You asked how I met him - that's how," she replied.

Then Paul looked over at the couch again and half-whispered, "He's sitting there with my nephew, Summer, he's sitting there with your kid like that's normal -"

"It is," she said quietly. "He's... good with David. Can you just be quiet long enough for me to explain? And if you know who he is, then you've read about him, so you obviously you must know that he's not an evil psycho."

"I don't know if that makes me feel any better," Paul muttered, raising the bag to breathe in and out of it some more. Then he dropped it and half-wailed, "I've been joking about axe murderers and Loki this whole time, but it was actually a half-cyborg assassin who's like a hundred years old."

"Who is also sitting right over there, and you're talking about him like he's not even in the room," she pointed out, though Bucky's expression never wavered from its blankness.

"Because I'm freaking out!" Paul exclaimed before groaning and tossing the bag over his shoulder.

"Well, stop freaking out! I know it's a shock and I probably should have told you a long time ago, but I knew you'd react like this and I was afraid you'd call the FBI or something."

"Why, because you're in love with an assassin wanted by the FBI?"

She faltered a little at that, glancing again at Bucky, who was now looking at her. She cleared her throat and said, "Look, I don't expect you to understand all this right away - I know it's a lot - but he's not what you think. He hasn't hurt me or David once. He's actually saved our lives twice."

That got Paul's attention. "Wait. What's the bad thing that happened?"

Her heart dropped a little bit. She'd been so focused on Paul's shock at her being involved with the admittedly extremely terrifying Winter Soldier that she'd almost forgotten that she had another bomb to drop on him. Quite nearly literally.

"Yeah, about that..."

Paul's expression shifted from confused and slightly scared to entirely scared. "Summer..."

She decided to just rip the bandaid. "My house - Grandma's house - it's gone."

He stared at her uncomprehendingly. "What?"

"It... blew up."

Behind her, Sam and Steve both slunk away to give them a bit of privacy for this part of the conversation. She stared at Paul as the reality of what she'd just said slowly dawned on him.

"Why?" he asked quietly.

"Uh..."

"Dammit, Summer, why?"

She paused at the unexpected snap and answered, "HYDRA... they were trying to kill him," she said, gesturing to Bucky.

And that was when he starting hyperventilating again.

"Paul, come on, breathe."

"You both... almost... oh my God..."

"We're fine. He saved us."

"But you - he - the whole place is gone?"

She nodded. "You're gonna pass out."

He held up his hands, muttering, "No, no, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm... you said he saved you twice."

She hesitated. "The first time was when he first stayed with me. There was a couple agents who found him and..."

"How could you not tell me all this?"

Her chest tightened at the sheer dismay and shock in her brother's voice. "I know, I just... I was trying to protect him and I didn't want you to freak out."

"I think I'm having a heart attack. I mean it. I don't feel right. Oh my God. Wait, so is this where you're living now?"

She nodded. "It's safest. I mean, I'm living in the same building as Captain America and Iron Man."

Paul nodded absently, laughing a little crazily again, then furrowing his brows as he grabbed one of his own wrists and starting counting his pulse. "I can't tell if I'm panicking or having a coronary episode. I'm a doctor. I should know this."

"You're panicking," she replied. After a moment of counting, Paul gave up and half-slumped in the chair, running a shaky hand through his hair, and Summer looked around the room briefly before plastering a nervous smile on her face and saying, "Soo... Bucky, this is my brother, Paul, and and Paul, this is my... boyfriend... Bucky."

Paul merely looked at her wearily, and Bucky's poker face didn't budge. With a groan, she grabbed her brother by his shoulder and dragged him up to his feet, then started leading him to her room.

"You're - hey - you're just gonna leave David with him?" Paul hissed as they entered the hallway, taking wide-eyed glances over his shoulder.

"It's fine," she muttered, though she could finally distinctly understand how very mad she must seem. It didn't matter though - she just needed to make Paul understand.

Once inside her room, she shut the door and then turned around to face Paul as he stood near the door and didn't budge. She stared at him for a minute before sighing and saying, "I'm sorry. I am."

Paul shook his head. "I... I'm not even mad, I'm just... confused. And extremely worried. Are you like a target now?"

"... Kinda," she cringed. "I mean, not really. But I'm a way to get to him."

"But why do they want him dead when he did all their dirty work?"

She gave him a look and replied, "Think about what you just asked."

"Okay, whatever," he shrugged, "but the house... the whole house? Did anything make it?"

She shook her head. "Just me and David. And my phone and his blanket."

"And you're gonna stay with this guy after this?" Paul asked incredulously. "I mean, this is horrible! And it wouldn't have happened if -"

She held up her hand and interrupted him. "Paul, seriously, I know you're saying that because you love me and I know how insane I must seem, but you don't know what you're talking about."

"And how is that my fault?"

"Because I knew this is what you'd do when I told you!" she replied, a bit exasperated. Then she let out a frustrated moan and wandered over to her bed, sitting on the edge of it and only speaking after Paul had perched next to her. "You wanted me to find a guy who treated me well, right? Who wouldn't take advantage of me, would respect me, understand what it means to have a special needs kid?"

"Yeah, but -"

"That's him," she said, her eyes pleading with his to understand. "It's super weird, I know, but it's true. He's the opposite of Mark."

"He's a killer."

"He's a victim. And if you blame him for what he did then you may as well blame me for being raped."

"Whoa, I never said that."

"I'm just saying, it's the same thing," she said. She then watched Paul sigh and look down at his feet, looking like he was trying hard to understand it all.

"How long have you been with him?"

"Well... it's been about six months since I met him, but we had our first date three months ago, so..."

Paul eyed her slightly suspiciously. "And it's serious."

"Pretty much."

"More than anything I've ever hoped for in my life, I hope you're being safe."

She rolled her eyes. "Duh. And we haven't even done that yet, so calm down."

He breathed a visible sigh of relief. "Good. You should keep waiting. A long time. Until you're married. Please don't marry him. Are you in love with him?"

"Oh my God, calm down," she said with slightly wide eyes.

"Well!" Paul shrugged. "You must be if your house getting blown up and almost dying hasn't knocked some sense into you."

Summer groaned and then thought for a moment before replying, "I don't know. How would I? It's not like I would know if I was."

"I can't believe you trust him with your kid. You don't trust anyone with him. And David sitting next to him like that... he barely sits next to me when I see him."

She shrugged. "He's seen Bucky a lot these last few months. He thinks the metal arm is the coolest thing ever."

Then there was silence for awhile. Summer stared at her hands, getting lost in her thoughts just before Paul spoke and drew her back.

"I can't believe the house is gone."

Hearing him say that brought a resurgence of emotions that she'd been trying to ignore since the house had blown up. Most of her best memories of that house involved Paul, from when they were little kids up until the teenage years came, before college and his career took him to California. She used to have pictures to remember those times with, but now she'd have to rely solely on memories that would consistently fade with time.

She hadn't realized that she was fighting tears until Paul pulled her into a hug.

"It's just stuff... I've got some pictures at my house. Some of Mom and Dad's stuff. Not everything's gone."

"I know... it was just... home."

"I know."

It was awhile before either of them spoke again. But eventually, Paul muttered, "I don't know how to be grateful to him for saving you guys when it's his fault it happened to begin with."

"He's not forcing me, Paul," she sighed. "Blame me if you need to blame someone. I do. I knew what I was getting into."

Paul sighed heavily and squished her closer. "I'll never know what to do with you. Seriously. Only you could get yourself into a situation like this."

"It's not my fault that he decided to pass out on my front lawn," she pointed out.

"Yeah, but it seems like a pretty big jump from that to serious relationship."

She pondered for a moment. "Not as big as you might think."

After a brief silence, he asked, "Doesn't it freak you out? The assassin thing?"

"Well, duh, I was terrified at first. I slept sitting up holding my gun for like a week. But he was even more scared than I was. He screamed in his sleep every night and could barely eat because they never gave him real food. He couldn't remember anything but what they made him do. It was horrible. It was pretty obvious by how confused he was and much he hated himself that he was no monster."

"... And in the middle of all that you, what, decided he was super dreamy anyway and took him out to dinner?"

"Well, I _cooked_ him dinner," she replied. "And you can't deny that he's dreamy."

"That's irrelevant. Still terrifying."

She pulled away then and gave him a look. "Only because you don't know him."

"You know what's horrible?" he sighed. "I can't even threaten his life on Dad's behalf. There's no way I could beat him up. I probably couldn't even scratch him. This is horrible."

"Oh, that reminds me," she suddenly said, "Mark paid me a visit a few days ago." As Paul's eyes grew to the size of saucers, she grinned and added, "This story might make you like Bucky a little more."

* * *

><p>"So... you invited her brother here."<p>

Bucky glanced up at Steve, still planted on the couch next to a little boy who apparently liked his company quite a bit that day. "Yeah. Probably shouldn't have."

"No, I think it's great you did," Steve quickly said. "Though maybe next time you might want to... warn her. Or me, so we could have skipped the whole security thing."

"I figured he probably wouldn't have been cleared to come here," Bucky replied.

Steve raised his eyebrows and said, "Well... yeah, Stark probably won't be too happy when he finds out there's an unauthorized guest on this floor, but... I'm not gonna cry over that."

Then Steve grinned a little bit, and before Bucky could grin back, the sound of a door opening and footsteps lightly padding along the floor towards the couch caught his attention. Just as he glanced back, Summer appeared, hands on the back of the couch as she tapped David's shoulder and quietly told him to follow her into their room. As the boy got up and did as he was told, Bucky glanced up to meet her eyes just in time for her to give him a small smile and then lean down to place a soft little kiss on his cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered just before pulling away, still wearing the smile as she turned and headed back the way she came.

He stared after her, hoping that was a good sign. Maybe his impulsive text hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

A moment later, the sound of more footsteps hit his ears, but this time they were a bit heavier, and they belonged to the floor's newest guest. Bucky looked up as Paul came to a stop near the couch, looking around awkwardly for a moment before shoving his hands in his pockets and appearing to search for something, possibly anything, to say.

"I'll give you two a minute," Steve chirped, smiling at both men before disappearing. Paul then took the seat that he vacated, looking up nervously and then back down, and the room was silent long enough to make even Bucky want to start squirming.

"Okay, so..." Paul finally started, taking a deep breath. "We, uh... got off on the wrong foot, I guess you could say." He paused again and Bucky furrowed his brows a bit. "I'm, uh... sorry? I probably should have been... more polite... since you're the one who... invited me here, so... yeah."

Having no clue what to say in large part due to not knowing this man at all, Bucky tried to think of a response but ended up just listening instead as Paul went on.

"But this is still really weird and I'm still confused how all of this happened to begin with. And I don't trust you. Which you shouldn't take personally, because I don't trust anybody, especially not with my little sister. Our dad's not here to threaten guys with a shotgun, so I've gotta do it. Which..." he gestured in dismay to Bucky, "I can't really do with you, but... I don't really care. I'll still kill you if you hurt her."

Of course, Paul couldn't kill him, but it was principal of the thing that mattered, and Bucky could understand that. In fact, listening to the still-twitchy brother talk about his sister in such a protective way brought a sense of familiarity, a twinge of something Bucky could relate to on a subconscious level. It took him a few minutes before he could connect the feeling to his own sister, whom he could barely remember. The feeling was a comfort, though - maybe it was one step closer to really remembering her.

"So..." Paul drummed his hands on his knees, and Bucky realized he'd been staring off towards the floor in thought. "Um... anyway. This is nice and awkward. I'll just... go now, since I've said what I needed to say." Then Paul started to stand, only to pause, look at Bucky curiously, and ask, "Did you really kill JFK?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Paul immediately cringed visibly and started muttering about being sorry and how he really didn't need an answer to that, but Bucky nodded anyway. "I don't remember it all that well, but..."

Paul then nodded, his look of mild terror from earlier returning just slightly to his eyes, and then he finally did stand up. "Okay. I'm gonna go find that paper bag again and... take a nap, maybe. I could really go for some Xanax right about now..."

As the other man started scouring the room in search of the bag, Bucky tried not to chuckle. There was very little physical resemblance between the two siblings - at first glance, it was hard to believe that they were related at all - but all one of them had to do was open their mouths and start stumbling over their sentences while hyperventilating, and it was suddenly very obvious that they were brother and sister.

Maybe he and his own sister had once been like that, similar and close, he thought as he lingered on the couch. Maybe someday he'd remember.

* * *

><p>After a very long day of dealing with Paul's anxiety and David's unwillingness to do anything but stay glued to his tablet, and then cringing when Tony Stark made an appearance clarifying that he hadn't actually been serious about running an orphanage, Summer was beat. Exhausted mentally, not so much physically. Making David take a bath in an unfamiliar space had been a nightmare, and so was getting him settled into bed, but she had expected it. Down the hall, Paul had been asleep for two hours in one of the empty rooms, utterly spent after his rather eventful day (and painfully awkward dinner with the floor's inhabitants, though he was getting along with everyone fine).<p>

Now that she finally had some time to herself, she thought about going to bed, but she wasn't particularly sleepy. There wasn't actually a whole lot to do in the tower, she'd noticed, at least for her. But that was why it was nice to have a very distracting and always-welcoming neighbor, whose room she decided to head towards.

The detour that she took to the kitchen was supposed to be a quick and innocent one, just to grab a soda out of the fridge. That was before her curiosity got the best of her.

After closing the door of the fridge, a shiny glint from a counter across the kitchen caught her eye. She'd vaguely noticed the tray full of various liquors in expensive glass containers the day before, but on a whim, she decided to walk towards them now to get a better look. It seemed incredibly cliche, she thought, the set-up of alcohol that probably cost more than most people spent on rent, and she had to wonder if Stark had such displays on every single floor of the tower just as an image thing.

Setting the soda down, she peered at the containers, guessing what was in each one. They all held dark liquors that ranged from light amber to dark, nearly black browns, and it only took her a minute to pluck the lid off of one and take a cautious whiff of whatever was inside.

She immediately wrinkled her nose and turned away - whatever was in there smelled more like an ingredient for a bomb than something meant for a human to ingest. Still, one by one, she smelled all the other ones, finding them less and less offensive as she went.

It was when she reached the last container, which held the lightest colored liquid, that she did a double take and had to sniff it again. It actually smelled good. Very good.

She looked around the empty room, quickly deciding to go ahead and pluck one of the empty glasses from the tray and try a sip. When was the last time she'd ever gotten to try the personal liquor supply of a world-famous billionaire? Never. And besides, if she hadn't earned the right for a drink or two after having her childhood home blown to bits by jerks who wanted her boyfriend dead, then that was just ridiculous.

Of course, the liquor being in a glass container and not the original bottle, she had no way of knowing the very high alcohol content of what she was about to try, and she didn't know how very quickly it would utterly smash her until it was too late.

And so, a short time later, already swaying slightly on her feet with only her third drink in hand, the girl with the very low tolerance for alcohol stumbled out of the kitchen and into the hallway, stopping ungracefully at Bucky's door. Before knocking, she looked down at herself and started clumsily undoing the top few buttons of her shirt, then fluffed her hair without realizing she was making it look disheveled and weird. Then she knocked on the door, leaning against the doorframe half out of necessity and half in an attempt to hopefully look alluring.

Then the door opened, and her lips stretched into a smile as she looked up through her lashes at the instantly confused man on the other side.

"Heyyy... Mister Barrnes..."

He took one look at the drink in her hand and the way that her shirt was half undone, not even needing to hear the way her words were already slurring before he half-grinned and pointed out, "You're drunk."

"Pfft," she scoffed, straightening up a bit and fighting the instant and overwhelming urge to lick his face. "I'm just buzzed." Then she took another drink from her glass, the burn not bothering her anymore, and then looked at Bucky pointedly before asking a lot more loudly than she realized, "Are you gonna let me in or what? Because, lemme tell you, I've had like three of these and all it takes is like one and I am like horny as f-"

Choking a little, Bucky grabbed her arm and shuffled her inside before turning back to the door, taking a deep, calming breath, and closed it.

* * *

><p>She stood there in his room, still nursing her glass, staring at him with heavy-lidded eyes and hair that looked like she'd been brushing it the wrong way, and Bucky unconsciously chewed his lip in slight despair. He wasn't really in the mood for a test of his self-control, but he had a feeling that's where this was headed.<p>

"This is really good," she said absently, lowering the glass and looking at it. "I have no clue what it is."

Half to just get the alcohol away from her, he stepped closer and snatched the glass from her hand and raised it to his own lips, knocking half of it back in one drink. He hadn't drank since a time he couldn't fully remember, but it tasted familiar enough for him to recognize what it was. "You're drinking whiskey." He licked his lips and then added, "The good kind."

"Hey, that's mine, don't drink it all," she protested as he made to finish the glass. She lunged ungracefully for it, but he raised it over both of their heads with a faint grin.

"You've had enough," he decided as she clawed at his arm in a vain attempt to bring it down.

"Oh come on! I deserve it!" she pouted, nearly climbing up him like a tree in her fervor to retrieve the drink. His left arm wrapped around her and held her against him, and at the touch her eyes left the unattainable glass and met his. The slight smirk didn't leave his face until she unexpectedly forgot all about the drink and grabbed his face, kissing him in a way that made him drop the glass to the floor without a second thought.

The thud of the glass hitting the carpet stole her attention, and she broke away to peer at what was left of her drink staining the white carpet and groaned. "Aw, now that's just a waste of perfectly good -"

He cut her off by kissing her again, almost laughing at her slight shriek of surprise. She tasted like the liquor he'd just spilled and something mildly sweet, like she'd been sipping coke between drinks, and he could instantly tell a difference in the way she was kissing him. It was braver, a little sloppier but not in a bad way, more in a way that gave him a glimpse of the desperation she was usually careful to at least partially hide from him. She wasn't trying to hold back or wow him with technique or skill; she was instead simply letting loose, and he liked it.

She was also making noises like he was doing a whole lot more than just holding her and kissing her. It wasn't helping the self control issue.

Adding to his doom, after a few moments, she seized him by the front of his shirt and started pushing him back, not stopping until he stumbled back on the foot of his bed. She was on his lap before he could blink, kissing him with her newfound fury and pressing herself to him so closely and tightly that it was almost hard to breathe.

His head was spinning by the time he felt her hands between them, doing something that he couldn't discern until he broke away long enough to take a breath and glance down. She was unbuttoning the rest of her shirt - or at least trying very hard to - and he grabbed her hand to stop her and breathed as she moved ravenous lips to his neck, "Stop, stop."

"Why?" she asked, coming up for air and using her other hand to try to pick up where the other left off.

"Because," he argued, taking both of her hands in his, "you're drunk and... it's not... right."

She let out a frustrated growl and let her head drop back in the process, momentarily distracting him with how her shirt tightened and parted slightly with the movement. "God, this sucks!"

He forced his eyes back up as she raised her head, and he realized that he hadn't heard what she said. "What?"

"This sucks!" she repeated. "Waiting sucks! Do you have any idea how much I just want you to throw me against a wall and just... destroy me?"

His eyes widened a little, mostly due to her terminology, and he sat there and watched mildly slack-jawed as she gripped his shoulders and continued wailing. "But then everything is stupid and we can't do that yet, because I'm stupid and your therapist is stupid and you're all... respectful and crap. And that's totally a good thing and I love that about you, but ugh, I am so... incredibly..."

"So am I," he managed to mutter, convinced that the combined effect that alcohol seemed to have on her of making her both extremely honest and extremely horny was kind of lethal.

"I mean I'm 25 and I've had sex once, and it was a nightmare, literally, and then you come popping up out of nowhere all tall and dark and intense and dripping sex everywhere like... bread crumbs..."

Bread crumbs?

As he furrowed his brows, she leaned in and brushed her lips against his jaw and murmured, "You smell good... even when you shouldn't smell good, you smell good... you're like... you're basically... a sex lollipop."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. She said it so seriously, but the minute he started laughing, she was laughing too, pulling away to watch the smile spread across his face. "What? It's true! And it's torture! Do you realize that all you have to do is kiss me for like five seconds and it's like -" she she held out her hands and made sounds meant to sound like, presumably, a waterfall. He suppressed a groan, reminding himself that she was drunk and throwing her on the floor and ravishing her wasn't right for some reason he was slowly forgetting.

"And then this!" She grabbed his metal hand, jarring him out of his thoughts. Her voice dropped down to a tortured lower tone and and she said, "You have no idea how hot this is to me. I'm pretty sure it's not even normal how hot I think it is. And the things I think."

She raised the hand to her face, putting the palm of it on her cheek and holding it there while his eyes widened with genuine surprise. "You... what?"

"It's super hot," she reiterated, nodding just to make sure he got it. He let his thumb run gently up and down near the corner of her mouth, feeling the tickling little sensation that those fingers had the capacity to feel, and then she turned slightly to press a kiss to the tip of the thumb. Then his mouth dropped slightly open and a jolt ran through his stomach when her lips parted and she drew his thumb into her mouth, sucking gently with closed eyes and flushed cheeks. He stared, breathing through his mouth and feeling his pulse quicken and heat blooming in his veins even with the decreased sensation in his metal limb.

The sight of her tongue flicking along his fingertip made him actually groan, out loud, and he suddenly realized the whirring sounds in his arm getting louder and louder the longer she... did what she was doing. Having no idea what the cause was, he ripped the hand away just in case it was gearing up to smash her face in.

Summer's eyes opened and she genuinely whimpered at the loss, grinning a little bit when she saw the heated look on his face. "I thought you'd like that."

He blinked a few times, trying to string a response together in his head, but then she was suddenly off his lap and on the floor, on her knees, pulling his apart and slipping between them while her hands worked clumsily at his belt. His jaw dropped - again - and he started protesting automatically.

"Summer, no, stop -"

"Please, I really want to -"

"But you're -"

"I don't care, and I'm not that drunk -"

"Summer..."

"But - sex lollipop - ahh!"

Her squeak was in response to being pulled up by her hair and then tossed - gently - on her back in the middle of the bed, then being held in place there by a very determined and equally frustrated Bucky. She gasped when she hit the bed and then smiled as she looked up at him, and a grin was on his own lips as his nose brushed hers and he murmured, "Stop."

"Take all my fun," she pouted, looking down at his lips and then back up, "you noble '40s gentleman sergeant war hero... guy."

"I'm not that noble."

She scoffed a little and brought her legs up around his hips, leveraging them down against hers and grinding up into them. He clenched his jaw and she smiled and did it again before he muttered, "You're teasing me."

"Me?" she asked innocently, still smiling. When he opened his mouth to retort, she leaned up and caught his bottom lip between her teeth. One of his fraying threads of self control snapped and he kissed her hard, almost angrily, his right hand moving down to grip her hip and pull her even closer while his other curled into a fist next to her head.

While he enjoyed her messier, noisier kisses and matched her desperation, her fingers pulled and yanked at his shirt impatiently. When he reluctantly broke away to let her tear it from his shoulders, he opened his eyes to find hers roaming shamelessly down his body. She bit her lip and giggled, "There's two of you."

Then she giggled again, and he sighed at his momentarily lapse of nearly forgetting how far gone she was.

"You know the only thing better than you?" she asked conspiratorially, like she was letting him in on a big secret. Then she grinned and said, "Two of you."

He might have rolled his eyes if she hadn't then caught him by surprise by rolling them over, suddenly on top of him as she kissed him and then started trying to unbutton her shirt again while plotting her next piece of scandalous writing out loud. "I wish that was possible because just imagine, one of you behind me saying things in my ear and doing whatever you want to me while another you's in front of me and I'm on my knees and -"

He gulped and his voice was a growl as he half-exclaimed, "If you don't stop I'm gonna forget why I shouldn't throw you against the wall like you want me to."

"Then I definitely won't stop," she grinned, at last successful with unbuttoning her shirt by some miracle. But before she could get it off, Bucky sat up and crushed her to him with a kiss that wiped the grin off of her face and brought back the breathy, uninhibited moans that had been torturing him since their first kiss of the night.

Once she had ceased her movements, he gently eased her back down to the bed, on her side while he faced her on his, he kissed her softly once more and murmured, "You'll thank me in the morning."

She closed her eyes and groaned. "Can't we just... screw around? It's nothing we haven't done before..."

Rather than point out that that's what they'd been doing already, he found that he could only stare at her slightly pouted lips for so long before he would give in.

He leaned in close, nearly on top of her again, kissing her lips before trailing across her jaw and down her neck, while his hand slowly peeled her shirt further apart and took its time traveling up and down her exposed skin. She hummed in appreciation, the light scratches of her nails on his scalp spurring him on as he trailed his mouth and hand lower.

His kisses had reached just past her belly button and his fingers were maneuvering open the buttons of her jeans when a soft, mildly grating sound caught his attention. He raised his head to find her snoring lightly, eyes closed and lips parted, instantly fast asleep.

He stared in disbelief for a moment before letting out a deep, frustrated sigh and flopping over on his back. He stared at the ceiling and suddenly regretted not letting her have her way when she'd been kneeling on the floor.

Eventually, he glanced over to her and her disheveled state. Then he sat up and leaned down, buttoning her shirt back up and moving some of the stray hair out of her face before drawing up his covers and pulling them over her peacefully sleeping form. Once she was sorted, he couldn't help but place one last light, barely-there kiss to her swollen lips before flopping back down and running his hand through his throughly messed up hair. What a way for the night to end.

Sex lollipop. He might have a questionable memory at best, but he'd never forget that one.

**A/N: Sorry about the slight delay in getting this chapter out, I've been busy and honestly forgot for a couple of days :) hope everybody is having a good holiday break! One of the reviewers for the last chapter asked if I had experience with an autistic child, and yes, I do - my four year old is on the spectrum. She isn't nonverbal though, so I only draw somewhat on my experience to write David, as he is meant to be on the more severe side than her. So I try very hard to stay accurate to his particular case while also keeping in mind that every autistic kid (and kids in general of course lol) are unique and that gives me a bit of leeway. But anyway. **

**Thanks to you amazing readers and followers and reviewers, as always, you have my love :D hope you all have a happy new year, and I'll see you all next week! :D **


	11. Chapter 11

Summer awoke to the sound of a door closing softly. Or at least, to anyone else, it would have sounded soft; to her, it sounded like a small planet had crashed into the Earth at warp speed.

She cracked her eyes open against the offensive morning light and then immediately shut them, groaning and turning from her stomach to her back. Her head pounded and her body felt heavy and shaky, like she was in the middle of some kind of flu, and she laid there in confusion for a few moments before she managed to open her eyes and realize that the bed she was in was not her own.

Eyes wide, she shot up far too quickly than her head could handle. It throbbed in protest and a wave of nausea instantly rolled harshly through her stomach, and it all came rushing back to her.

_Oh my God_, she wailed mentally,_ I got drunk and called Bucky a sex lollipop._

And then, rather than her usual word vomit, literal vomit began climbing out of her throat at an alarming speed. It took every bit of nonexistent strength she had, but she somehow managed to make it to the bathroom in time.

After expelling the worst of the hangover and ending up half-sprawled out on the cold floor in recovery, Summer groaned miserably and couldn't decide what was worse - the hangover or the embarrassment of the previous night. When she heard another opening of a door, she quickly settled on embarrassment and looked up wearily at the man standing casually in the bathroom doorway.

Bucky looked down at the sight before him, looking equal parts amused and concerned. Before he could say a word, she muttered, "Don't judge me."

"I'm not," he said, allowing a grin to form on his lips. "David's still sleeping, by the way."

"... You checked?" she asked, voice smaller than she intended, giving away how suddenly touched she was that he'd do that. He nodded, and she got out a thank you before she sat up to barf again.

Now that she'd added to her already-gigantic embarrassment, she sat back once she was done and accepted an offered glass of water without looking Bucky in the eye. Some of her bodily shaking had decreased with the vomiting, but the pounding in her head had gotten worse. As if on cue, after she sipped the water a few times, she felt three pills being shoved into her hand. This time she looked up and gave her helper a weak smile. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"Just don't let me drink ever again," she groaned, fully serious.

"I don't know," he said as she put the pills on her tongue and tried not to gag. "I kind of liked you drunk."

She knocked the pills back with a wince and then gave him a sidelong glare, accepting his hand and slowly getting to her feet. "That's not even funny."

"I'm serious," he replied, and she paused as she thought back on where her memories ended.

"Did I really... fall asleep in the middle of..."

"Yeah," he nodded, shrugging slightly as if to assure her that it was fine.

"I'm sorry," she said, cringing a little. "I didn't mean to."

"It's all right. I... managed."

Before she could think too long and ask what that meant, he was helping her out of the bathroom and steering her back towards her own room. She sighed and tried not to think about all the humiliatingly honest things she said the night before, waiting to speak again until she reached her door and smiled at Bucky once more. "Thanks again."

"No problem," he said, opening the door for her and ushering her inside with a hand on the small of her back. "I do try to be more than just a sex lollipop."

Then he grinned and was gone, leaving her to stare and try to grasp with her sluggish mind the fact that he had just cracked a joke. A real joke. She blinked, suddenly trying to remember if she'd heard him joke before or if this was the first time. When that just made her head hurt more, she groaned and closed her door, vowing to never, ever, so long as she lived, ever get drunk again.

* * *

><p>A thoroughly unenjoyable shower later, Summer was half-slumped at the kitchen table, eyeing the perfectly good omelet in front of her with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, trying to ignore the gleeful smiles that her brother was sending her way from the other side of the table.<p>

Today, it was just the two male members of her family and the super soldiers in her life at breakfast, but Paul was the only one on her nerves.

"I haven't seen you hungover in forever."

She glared across the table, pecking her plate with her fork. "Go die."

"You should have woken me up. I would have totally gotten hammered with you."

"I didn't even mean to get drunk," she muttered.

"How long's it been since I've even seen you drunk? Wait, I remember - it was that one Thanksgiving at my house. We watched 'War Horse' and you started talking about all the creepy things you wanted to do to Tom Hiddleston in front of my kids."

While Summer's face reddened with sheer rage, Bucky's attention was suddenly piqued. "Who?"

Waving a hand, Paul explained, "This British actor who is seriously ugly as -"

"He's a beautiful man!" She suddenly exclaimed, jabbing her fork in Paul's direction. "And you can shut your jerk mouth, trying to add to my embarrassment - what are you, twelve?"

"Who?" Bucky asked again, eyes full of confusion.

"Here, let me show you," Paul said, getting out his phone, and Summer threw her arms up in frustration. Yesterday, Paul had barely been able to look at Bucky without twitching and collapsing into a catatonic state, and now suddenly he was playing buddies for the sake of further tormenting her.

"See?" Paul said, leaning over and holding up his phone. Even Steve peered at it with mild interest. "Giant forehead. Tiny eyes. Even I'm better looking than that."

"Pffah!" she scoff-laughed. "Sure, Ed Sheeran."

After a moment of inspection, Bucky looked away and glanced her way with a mildly amused expression. She shook her head slightly, then glanced at Steve, who suddenly looked thoughtful and slightly puzzled as he looked away from the picture. "Kind of looks familiar..."

"Maybe," Summer piped up, "you should tell everyone about your crushes, since they're way worse than mine have ever been."

Paul scoffed and leaned back in his chair. "Impossible. And I'm married. I don't have crushes."

Summer raised an eyebrow. "Hillary Clinton."

While Steve visibly shuddered and Bucky looked at him questioningly, unaware of who that was, Paul suddenly froze and then slowly looked up, his expression the utmost of sobriety. "She's gotten better with age and I like strong women. Why you gotta bring that up?"

"Why do you?" Summer retorted.

"Because I have to! It's my duty!"

She groaned and gave up trying to force herself to eat. "I'm going back to bed. You're bringing my headache back."

Fully serious, she dragged herself up and off of the chair, looking at Bucky a bit apologetically before turning and heading back towards her room. David followed her very reflexively, and she'd gotten halfway to the hallway before Paul jogged up behind her. "Hey, wait a minute! I wanted to talk to you about something."

She groaned and turned around, replying as coherently as she was able to. "Ungh?"

"No, not about ungh. So I was thinking."

"Hope you didn't hurt yourself."

He smiled and shook his head. "Only a little. Anyway, I was thinking. And I know what you're gonna say at first, but I've decided that I don't care."

"... Should I be scared?" she asked warily.

Ignoring her question, he replied, "I know you never want to accept my help, but -"

Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, don't you dare try to give me money right now."

"I'm not trying, I'm doing it," he grinned. "Now I've got a little bit saved up -"

"You have like a zillion kids!" she exclaimed. "And one on the way! I can't take your -"

"I have a zillion kids, yes, but only one sister whose house just blew up, so hush. I'm not trying to give you cash. I want to take you out and let you pick a laptop." When she fell silent in slight surprise, he added, "You're a writer. You need one, whether you decide to keep on with school or not. So I'm gonna buy you one. My only condition is you have to actually write something."

She slouched a little bit, suppressing a groan. "I can't even think about writing right now."

"Well, I didn't say you needed to start today. But Summer," his tone became more impassioned, "you've got to start one of these days. You're sitting there on talent other people would kill for and not doing anything with it."

"... I made a hundred bucks writing about a brand of gardening soil for a blog a couple months ago," she replied weakly.

"You don't even garden. This is what I'm talking about."

She sighed, throwing up her hands and arguing, "I know, I just don't know what to write. Nothing seems interesting enough and I just have zero ideas."

"Maybe you're thinking too hard," he suggested. "I mean, if you're looking for interesting, start with yourself."

She wrinkled her nose. "Eh?"

"Do you know how many people write books and blogs about themselves who haven't had lives half as interesting as yours?" he asked rhetorically. "Just write about your life, fictionalize some stuff here and there, change the names, and bam, next great novel."

She stared at him for a moment, taking in the pure sincerity on her brother's face, and then burst into laughter. "Are you high?"

He put his hands on his hips and sighed in frustration just as the elevator doors from across the room opened. Summer glanced over to see a petite redhead sashaying out of the doors, and she turned back to Paul and smiled, "Yay, now you get to spaz out again."

His eyes followed to where hers had been and instantly widened. "Is that..."

Summer nodded. "It is."

Looking mildly interested and somewhat suspicious, Natasha stopped not too far away from where they stood and asked anyone in the room who would answer, "Who's this?"

While Paul stared, looking either slightly constipated or very stunned, Summer answered, "This is my brother, Paul."

"Oh. Hi," Natasha said, tone instantly turning bored but not impolite.

"I'm married," Paul muttered, and Summer rolled her eyes. "Extremely married. To a half-Puerto Rican woman. My children are beautiful."

Natasha furrowed her brows at the odd "greeting" before glancing at Summer and remarking, "He's definitely your brother."

Summer nodded in resigned agreement as Natasha then turned to presumably talk to the suddenly very cheerful Steve. Then Summer punched Paul in the shoulder.

"Ow!" he hissed, clutching the shoulder and glaring at her. "What the heck?"

"She already thinks I'm a freak, don't make it worse!" she hissed back. "I'm awkward enough for the both of us."

"I am not awkward," he contended. "You're awkward. I was just reminding myself that I'm married. It seemed necessary."

She rolled her eyes. "She's fondue-ing Captain America. She's not gonna look twice at anyone."

Paul's brows furrowed. "Fon-whatting?"

"Never mind," she shook her head. "So where are we going?"

"... Does New York have, like, a Best Buy?"

She smiled at the dumb question.

"Probably."

After she turned to head towards her room to change, urging David to come along, she heard Paul ask, "Did you say fondue-ing?"

She just laughed, the fact that she was somewhat in on the inside jokes of Captain America and his friends enough to give her a brief thrill of giddiness that was a nice change from her still-aching head.

* * *

><p>The minute his sharp hearing had picked up on a few words of Summer's conversation with her brother and he realized that she was planning on making a trip out of the tower without him, Bucky had asked Steve for a favor. Now he was walking to her room, almost forgetting to knock before he walked inside. A part of him was still used to how it was when he first lived with her, when things like knocking and general societal niceties were a lot more lost on him than they were now.<p>

She yelled for him to come in, and he opened the door to find her kneeling on the floor, struggling to get a sweater over her protesting son's head.

"Come on, we've gotta go bye-bye for a little bit with Uncle Paul," she said for what was mostly likely the tenth time, fighting to get him to put his arms through the sleeves. "Ugh, David, stop fighting me..."

Clearly, the kid did not want to go anywhere, and Bucky watched Summer struggle for a good five more minutes before David was finally dressed and quite unhappy about it. That was when Summer glanced up at him, smiling with a shrug as she got up to her feet. "Yesterday it took like half an hour so this is an improvement. Something wrong?"

He shook his head. "No. Where are you going?"

"I guess to a store to get a laptop. Paul's idea," she replied.

He glanced down at the floor and then asked, "Can you come with me for a minute?"

"Sure," she nodded, and he quickly turned and stepped out of the room. He walked the hallway, Summer a step or two behind him, until he reached his room, and after he walked inside, he flipped on the light and immediately headed for his dresser.

Neither of them said a word as he reached into the top drawer, but when he turned around holding a small gun for her to take, her eyes widened and she breathed, "... Oh. Right. I guess I need a new one of those."

His fingers brushed hers as she took the weapon. He glanced up at her, then turned around and pulled out something else.

"Oh... um..."

He handed her a small keyring holding a black can of mace and a knife, and she took it with her free hand. Not quite done yet, he then also handed her a taser, and she started laughing slightly nervously. "Are you gonna hand me a sword next?"

He didn't quite return her smile. "If I can't always be there with you, I at least want you armed."

She nodded at his more serious tone, looking down at her armful of weapons. "I'm sure I'll be fine, I mean... it's not like anyone really actually wants me." When he didn't answer, she added quietly, "... Right?"

"I'd rather not take the chance," he replied.

Then a brief moment of silence passed, and Summer suddenly wondered aloud, "Can I even legally carry a gun here? I probably can't, I'm sure I need a permit for this thing. I need to register it, because if I got caught with it without a license or -"

"You're taking it," he said firmly, leaving no room for argument in the matter. The law, as far as he cared, was irrelevant in this case, and could probably be sorted out by Steve if it ever became an issue.

She didn't seem willing to argue the point for very long. "Okay... well... thank you. If someone tries to attack me, I can stun them, mace them, shoot them, and then dismember them." Then she smiled, and he almost did too, just because of the odd things that she thought was funny.

"The gun's like your last one, everything's in the same place. I still want you to practice."

She nodded. "I will. As long as you keep teaching me. That was fun." He grinned faintly in agreement, and she returned it before drawing in a breath and saying, "Okay, this crap is getting heavy. I guess I'll go dump it all in my purse."

He then followed her silently back into her room, where she did just that, dropping her new armory into a new giant purse she'd bought the day before. After, she turned back to him and smiled somewhat shyly before walking up to him and placing a chaste kiss on his lips. "Thanks."

"Call me if you feel uncomfortable or suspicious," he said, face still the picture of seriousness.

"You're kind of freaking me out now," she said, voice dropping as she frowned slightly. "I wasn't even thinking about it before and now I'm probably gonna be paranoid."

His frown mirrored hers. "... Sorry, I just... I wish you'd stay here."

"I am," she replied. "But I'm not gonna never step outside."

"I know," he muttered, inclining of his head slightly, "I'm not saying that, but -"

"I know," she interrupted. "I know what you're saying. And it's just that... if I really stop and think about what happened, and I let it scare me the way I'm trying not to, and I let it get to me, I'm afraid that I might just... kind of... lose it."

He understood losing it. He also understood what it was like to think about something to the point of letting it unhinge you, and that was something he definitely did not want for her.

"So I'm trying to just go on like normal - kind of - and going out and, you know, functioning, is a part of that."

He nodded. "Just be careful and... keep your eyes open, okay?" When she nodded in agreement, he added, "And I mean it - call me if you need to. Even if it's nothing."

"I will, I promise," she said sincerely.

He looked at her for a moment or two before nodding again. "Okay."

A moment later, he was about to leave and let her finish getting ready in peace, but her voice stopped him before he could turn around. "I'm really glad you asked Paul to come here. I probably would have put off telling him for so long and made it a lot worse than it had to be. It means a lot to me that you did that."

He wasn't sure how to respond at first. Words were still far from his comfort zone, and her heartfelt gratitude left him even more lacking for words than usual. But luckily, she didn't let him flounder for long, stepping forward again and kissing him a little less lightly than she had a moment before. The fact that she never pushed him or nagged him to say or even do more than what his current comfort level allowed was something that he appreciated as much, he suspected, as she appreciated his invitation to her brother. Maybe more. Maybe he'd figure out a way to say it someday.

As she began to pull away, Bucky opened his eyes in time to see her flinch and grasp the back of her head with a hissed, "Ouch!"

A small toy that fell to the floor seemed to be the culprit, and he watched her turn around and glare at David, who promptly ran and hid in the bathroom. Summer turned back to him with a mix of a smile and a grimace. "He'll get used to us one of these days. Hopefully. But hey, I'll see you again in a few hours, okay?"

He nodded, and she planted one more kiss on his cheek before he turned to leave her room. As he walked down the hallway, unsure of where he was going, he began to realize how wise his therapist's advice was about getting a hobby. He'd have to find something interesting to kill the next few hours with, otherwise he'd end up following Summer and being her invisible, probably unnecessary and extremely overly cautious, bodyguard.

* * *

><p>"That guy was flirting with you. See, why couldn't you have gone for someone like that? A guy who sells phones and computers and probably isn't a million years older than he looks."<p>

Summer sighed and readjusted her purse on her shoulder as she stood in the middle of the electronics store. Her other hand was holding David's, and she gave Paul a look as she replied, "He was not flirting with me. And really? Can't you drop it?"

Paul shrugged, leaning against a counter full of various laptop displays and half-whispering, "Can you blame me? I have to leave tomorrow knowing you're living a hallway across from... _you know who,_ and -"

"Now he's Voldemort?" she hissed back, fighting a laugh.

"Actually, yes, let's make that his codename. He's Voldemort and you're Bellatrix. Anyway -"

"I'm actually okay with that."

"Good. Anyway, I have to leave you here in his... hands... or hand... and I'm probably not gonna ever sleep again now that I know. Why couldn't you have gotten the hots for Captain America? Seriously?"

"Oh my gosh, Paul," she groaned. "I thought you were coming around by the way you acted at breakfast."

"I can ignore anything for the sake of embarrassing you," he shrugged. "And why do you keep looking around like you're checking for snipers?"

She suddenly froze, not realizing what she'd been doing, and sighed before briefly rubbing her eyes with her fingertips. "Sorry. He just freaked me out before we left, and -"

"Who freaked you out? Voldemort?"

"Yes - I mean no - he didn't mean to, but -"

"What did he do?"

She huffed and opened her mouth right as the allegedly flirtatious salesman approached them, carrying a box containing the laptop she'd picked out. "Follow me to the counter, guys," he smiled brightly, his sandy hair and moderately large build vaguely reminding her of a high school jock as she followed with a weak smile.

With talk of Voldemort momentarily tabled, Summer continued to fidget uncomfortably with her inordinately heavy purse while trying to ignore the overly cheery (and only now noticeable) smiles that the guy kept shooting her as he rang in their purchase.

"So you said you're a writer?" the guy asked conversationally. "Have I read anything of yours?"

"Probably not," she shrugged.

"So up and comer?" he smiled again.

"I guess so," she replied dully.

After Paul swiped his card, the guy chirped, "Hey, we do deliveries sometimes, so if you need help getting this home -"

"We're good!" she replied a little too quickly and too loudly. "I mean, thank you, but we've got it."

"All right," he smiled, nonplussed. "Here you go. You guys have a great day."

As Paul grabbed the bulky but lightweight box, Summer nodded and smiled in response, turning and heading towards the exit while consciously trying not to look over her shoulder or suspiciously at anyone in general, but that was getting harder to do the heavier her purse became, reminding her of its contents and why she was in New York to begin with. She shook it off as they left the building and Paul sighed noisily next to her.

"Told you he was flirting."

She wrinkled her nose, stepping out into the pedestrian traffic. "He was gross."

"Well, he was no Voldemort, but - hey, you're doing the looking for a sniper thing again."

"Ugh," she closed her eyes briefly, again fighting with the strap of her purse. "I can't help it. I didn't think I'd do this, but I think I'm seriously gonna have paranoia issues for awhile."

"I'm pretty sure that's extremely normal after what you've been through," Paul pointed out. "Although you need a new weapon now, don't you?"

She grimaced and shook her head. "Why do you think I keep moving my purse around and fighting with it?"

His eyes widened, staring at the purse in question and asking, "Do I even want to know what's in there?"

"The question is, what isn't," she replied. "Let's just make sure not to jaywalk or do anything else to get a cop's attention. I haven't even looked up the gun laws here yet."

"Could you even get to it if you needed it?" he asked skeptically. "I know what your purses look like."

"This one's new, so yes," she muttered. "Hopefully. Now can we talk about something else while we're in public? This isn't helping my paranoia."

"You know, not to be a negative Nancy, but I think you might have issues with paranoia and anxiety no matter what as long as you're here with him."

Giving him a side-glance, she replied, "Actually, he makes me feel safe."

"That seems like such an oxymoron."

She shrugged carelessly. "It is what it is."

"Well, do me a favor. Since I'm gonna need anxiety meds after all of this, at least keep me updated. And I mean it - the minute anything happens, you tell me, whether you like it or not. I don't want to have to wait for more cryptic texts from Voldemort to know that something's up. Okay?"

"Okay, yes, yes," she nodded. "I got it."

"Swear on Severus Snape."

The expression on her brother's face was so dead serious, it was as if he was asking her to swear on the life of his firstborn. Biting back a hearty giggle, she nodded. "I swear on Severus Snape, you nerd."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Damn straight."

After a few more moments of walking in silence, a thought popped up in Summer's head, thankfully distracting her from the urge to keep looking around for potential bad guys. "Have I told you yet about how I met Thor and how he liked my chocolate cake?"

Paul spit out a mouthful of the water bottle he'd been sipping, and she laughed, knowing in that moment how very much she would miss him when he was gone.

* * *

><p>"All right, and... done."<p>

Natasha handed Bucky his phone after having tinkered with it for a few moments, and after he looked down at the map displayed on his screen with a blinking red dot in the middle, he looked up and nodded. "Thanks."

"No problem. Does she know there's a tracker on her gun?"

Bucky shook his head, glancing at Steve, who sat next to Natasha on the couch opposite Bucky, looking very disapproving about it all.

Natasha glanced at Steve, patting his knee and saying, "Relax, Cap. I tracked her for almost two months and she didn't know. It's no big deal."

"But it's not right," Steve replied. "And actually - why _did_ you track her, Nat?"

She shrugged. "She was an unknown - still is - and too close to us. Always a good idea to keep an eye on all the variables."

"Still," Steve argued, "it isn't right. But it's one thing coming from you - for you," he turned to Bucky, "it's another. Just tell her you want to track her for peace of mind. I'm sure she'll understand."

Bucky sat there for a moment, staring at the slowly-moving little dot on the screen, considering both points of view before muttering a bit unsurely, "Would it.. seem..."

"A little psychotic? Overly protective?" Natasha guessed, analyzing her nails. "I think you crossed that bridge a long time ago, and I'd bet that she's aware."

While Bucky shot her the sort of glare that she was quite used to getting from him, Steve said, "I don't think it's unreasonable to track her. I think that doing it without her consent is unnecessary."

The word consent landed in Bucky's ears like a brick, and suddenly he knew that Steve was right. Consent was something he never wanted to compromise on in any particular situation with Summer, no matter how benign, and this, he realized, was an example of that.

"I'll tell her."

While Natasha rolled her eyes, Steve nodded in approval. "Good."

And later on, after Summer returned to the tower, when she somewhat timidly asked Bucky if he'd consider putting a tracker in her gun, just to give her some extra peace of mind, he only had to explain that she already had one in it before she understood why her request had made him smile.

* * *

><p>One day later, Summer stood on a curb a safe three blocks away from Stark Tower, helping see that Paul's exit from the tower was a lot quieter than his entrance. David stood quietly at her side, holding her hand as she watched her brother shove his bag into a cab trunk before turning back to her and shaking his head.<p>

"I'm gonna miss you even more now, kid."

She smiled sadly and braced herself for the bone-crushing hug that she knew was coming. When it came, she returned it wholeheartedly and muttered against his shoulder, "You should move here. Be a hot shot New York doctor instead of whatever you are in Cali."

"And you should come to California and live with your big brother while you write the next great American novel," he retorted, still squeezing the life out of her.

"The Dark Lord might object to that," she replied, sucking in a deep breath when he finally let up and pulled back a bit.

"This is all really ironic, considering you dressed up as Bellatrix that one Halloween in high school," he said with another slight sigh.

She shrugged. "At least my Voldemort has a nose. And hair. And -"

"I don't want to know what else he has," Paul said, shuddering slightly. "It was awkward enough saying goodbye to him and trying to accept all this without the icky details of your gross makeout sessions. Or whatever it is you two do."

"It's super scandalous," she replied with a straight face. "Can't say in front of little ears."

Paul fought off a grimace - poorly - and muttered, "You're disgusting. But speaking of little ears..."

Paul bent down to David's level, waving slightly to catch his attention as he smiled. "I'm gonna miss you, Buddy. Take care of your mama for me, will you? Did I earn a hug this time?" When David shrunk back a little, Paul held up his hands in surrender. "Okay. No hug. High five for the uncle that bought you a month's worth of candy yesterday?"

Reluctantly, David gave in and gave Paul a rare high five. Paul whooped in victory and then mussed the child's hair before standing again. "I got a high five. That's awesome."

"He just needs to see you more and you'd get hugs," she smiled back.

"Well, we'll work on that," he nodded. The cab driver honked at them, and Paul growled at the interruption before pulling his sister into one last lung-puncturing hug before he had to go.

"Text me every day, like always. And don't take forever to answer, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Stay safe " he said seriously as he pulled away.

She smiled. "You know Voldemort says the same thing every time he has to leave me."

Paul paused a bit and then shook his head. "I might wrap my head around all this in about... fifteen years or so."

"You're telling me," she chuckled. The cabbie honked again, and she added, "Better get going, doc."

Begrudgingly opening the cab door, he pointed at her and said. "I mean it about the texting thing."

"Okay!" she playfully exclaimed.

"I love you, kid."

"I love you too, nerd."

One more smile, and with that, he climbed inside the taxi and was gone just a few seconds later. She exhaled heavily as she watched the yellow car disappear down the busy streets, wishing that no matter where she was, she always seemed to be goodbye to somebody who wasn't around nearly as much as she needed them to be.

* * *

><p>Nearly a week passed following Paul's arrival and subsequent departure. David slowly adjusted to his new surroundings, and gave up his hunger strike at last, much to Summer's relief. She took him once a day to the child care room that Pepper had invited her to use, and while he stayed away from the other kids present, he took to the room and the toys within fairly quickly. She made it a routine in advance of her interview, just in case it was a success and she got the job.<p>

And so, when Thursday morning came, while David played in the childcare center and Summer nervously sat down ten floors above for her first interview in years, Bucky stood in the kitchen fiddling half-asleep with the coffee machine while blinking to force his eyes to stay open. He'd managed four and a half hours before his dreams forced him awake, and if it took an entire package of coffee to wake him up, then that was better than trying to face sleep again.

When he finally got the thing running, he turned around and realized that the odd noises he'd been hearing was Steve opening some kind of large box in the middle of the living room. He squinted and asked blearily, "What are you doing?"

Steve looked up and smiled brightly as he pulled out a few pieces from the box. "I found this the other day when I was out."

Bucky stared at the box, unsure of what "this" was, at least until Steve pulled the main part out and Bucky nodded. "Record player."

"I had one like this before, but I had to leave it in Washington," Steve explained unnecessarily, lifting the player to a glass coffee table and carefully setting it down. "It's the real thing, from when we were kids. And," he smiled again, "I happen to have some of my old records."

Unable to muster up much of the enthusiasm Steve seemed to have over the matter, Bucky turned and poured half of the now-finished coffee into one cup before walking out of the kitchen and sitting down in front of the coffee table. He glanced up mid-gulp when Steve said while still messing with the record player, "I know that sensory things are supposed to help trigger memories - sights and smells and sounds, and I figured -"

"Connor tell you that?" Bucky guessed, slightly annoyed for some reason if that was the case, though he wasn't sure why.

Steve stopped for a moment and shook his head. "No, I... 'Googled' it."

And just like that, Bucky's annoyance instantly faded. He looked down at his cup, unsure of what to say back to that, but Steve quickly started talking again and saved him the trouble. He was glad, because the idea of Steve pouring over the Internet's suggestions of how to help people with amnesia recover their memories made him feel almost uncomfortably grateful to have Steve in his life.

"So, want to give it a try?"

"Sure," Bucky shrugged, figuring that at the very least, it wouldn't trigger any HYDRA memories.

Steve left the room briefly and then came back with an armful of records that looked as old as the player, though they appeared well-cared for in their only mildly frayed sleeves.

"SHIELD saved all my stuff," Steve explained, sitting down next to Bucky and setting the records down on the table. "These sat in a warehouse for seventy years." He started thumbing through the records, then grabbed one and muttered, "Let's start with this one."

Bucky finished his coffee as Steve put the record on, and after he set his cup down, the soft strains of the first few notes started filling the room. They sat in silence for a moment, and Bucky tried to focus on the song, which was a slow, sort of languid tune. The sounds crackled gently and he tried hard to find a sense of familiarity in it, and to a small degree, he did, though the familiarity was more in the technical sounds of the record player than the music itself.

He had long learned to not be disappointed when an attempt to recall memories was unsuccessful, so his face gave nothing away when Steve asked, "Anything?"

He shrugged. "Not really."

"I figured that one probably wouldn't do it," Steve said, leaning forward to take the record off and put another one on. "But this one," he said, holding one up, "this was actually yours. Might have better luck this time."

Still skeptical, Bucky got up to get a refill of coffee while Steve set up the next record. He'd emptied the pot and had just turned back around when the livelier, instantly familiar song began playing, and it stopped him in his tracks almost immediately.

Where the last song left him blank and empty, this one immediately hit some place deep and well-hidden in his mind, tugging at threads knotted and scattered beyond his reach and pulling them free to flood his mind with dizzying flashes of a time long past.

_The air was heavy with smoke and the cool weight of a half-filled glass in his hand anchored him to the vision of a somewhat dimly lit but loud and vibrant club, filled with other people and voices of all sorts, but it was all background noise. His one and only focus was on a feminine, sparkling laughter in his ears, and the lure of warm green eyes under rich red hair._

_He laughed with her, watching his free hand reach up to brush an errant, perfect curl out of those eyes, and though he never heard the words leave his own mouth, he knew that he would ask her to dance, and she would say yes, and it would not be the last time that he would look into her eyes or feel her hair slip between his fingers._

It was over nearly as quickly as it began, but it felt as if it had lasted minutes rather than mere seconds. Reality came back with all the gentleness of a flashlight to the eyes, and as he nearly crushed the cup in his hand with the force of his grip and stared at the record player, it must have showed on his face.

He heard Steve ask if he was okay, but he didn't register the words. He was still clinging to that fleeting memory, still savoring the shocking clarity of it, the way that it left him feeling as if all it would take was a few more tugs on a few other threads, and maybe it would unlock a whole web of memories previously hidden from him.

The woman's name was on the tip of his tongue, her face so familiar and so well-known to whatever part of his mind that the image of her had been locked in that he knew, on a level made more of instinct than of sense, that she had been important. He felt it, knew it, but what was her name?

It was there, so _close_, just waiting for him to grasp it, if he could just remember...

And then, he did remember. "Vivian," he blurted out the moment it popped into his head with such ease that it was hard to believe that it had ever left.

Steve turned off the record, but the lack of music didn't stop his mind from continuing to race with this newfound piece of his history.

"I thought you might remember her," Steve said softly. "Do you... need to sit down?"

He did feel a bit dizzy, but he shook his head and looked at Steve. "She was... it feels like..."

"Important, yeah," Steve affirmed.

"You didn't tell me about her." He didn't say it in an accusatory way, but more of a slightly inquisitive statement.

"Well, I thought it would only frustrate you more if I did while you couldn't remember," Steve explained.

He suddenly had a myriad of questions, but he didn't want to fire them at Steve. Steve was right - it was better to remember for himself, because there was little worse than being told a story about yourself that you had no recollection of and no feelings regarding.

No, _this_, he wanted to answer for himself, and he was sure that if he stood there long enough and thought hard enough, surely he would be able to. That flash of a memory was the most vivid non-painful one that he'd had in so long, and he could almost feel everything else that was locked behind it, if he could just find the right way in...

He stood there, still in the kitchen though he'd eventually set his cup down, staring down at the counter in front of him and trying to connect the memory to others while it was still fresh and real in his mind. He was oblivious to the ding of the elevator, the clicking of heels across the floor, and the gentle calls of his name by Steve, at least until Summer's smiling face was suddenly almost directly in front of him.

Her exclamation started out joyous and then tempered off into caution. "I got the... the... are you okay?"

He blinked a couple of times and glanced at Steve, who had been gesturing somewhat pointedly to Summer, and he quickly nodded and forced himself to focus back on the present. "Yeah, I'm fine. What did you say?"

She looked at him in concern for a moment before her smile returned and she said happily, "I got the job! I start next week!"

Her smile was infectious, and it was then that he managed to look down and take in her entire appearance, still a bit thrown off by the previous few moments. He'd missed her that morning, so this was his first time seeing her that day. She had dressed like she already had the job, in a type of outfit he'd never seen on her before - black pencil skirt, white ahort-sleeved blouse, and hair up in a youthful but passably professional type of hold on her head. The black high heels were the nail in his coffin.

He managed to mumble out a half-coherent "congratulations" just as she grabbed him and hugged him in a fit of excitement.

"Thank you! I'm excited. I mean, it's extremely low-level and I'm probably just gonna be getting coffee and answering phones for a long time, but still, working here at all is so weird and awesome, and now I don't have to worry about being a jobless loser!"

He grinned at her rambling while his senses were assaulted with the scent of her clean hair and perfumed skin as she clung to him. Her presence was chasing away his newly discovered memory, but he didn't mind. He would have time, an abundance of it, to search for more memories that corresponded to the one he'd recovered, and he had a name and a song, at least, to help him do so.

It might have seemed like a minor thing, to remember one single moment and one woman and her name, but it gave him hope after a long time of remembering so little after so long. Something else he'd have to thank Steve for later.

When she pulled away, still smiling exuberantly, she took a closer look at him and let her hands frame his face for a moment as she asked, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," he replied, for once actually meaning it for the most part. "Really."

She seemed to believe him. "Okay," she smiled softly. Then her eyes brightened and she exclaimed, "Let's do something fun! Like a date! We should totally go on a second date. Can we?"

It was impossible not to smile at the rapidly changing emotions on her face, starting with excitement, pure happiness, and then slight unsureness after blurting out the date idea. "Yeah, why not," he replied, eyes flickering down to her legs again as she let out a very quiet squeal of excitement.

"Awesome! Can we do it today? What do you want to do? I'm talking too fast - I'm sorry, I'm just really excited," she grinned, blushing a little at her own over-exuberance. "And I've never asked anyone out before. This is super exciting. How do I look? I tried to look professional, but I didn't really know what I was doing so I just Googled 'personal assistant' and looked at the images that popped up."

When she finally stopped to take a breath, he opened his mouth to answer her question but fell a bit short. It didn't help that Steve was watching from the couch with mild amusement, and while he had a very pervasive feeling that such a thing never would have hindered an expression of a very detailed compliment before, it only served to tongue-tie him more now. Which was ridiculous and mildly angering.

"You look..." he trailed off, surveying her again from top to bottom, again getting stuck on the shoes for a moment and the way that they elongated her already-perfect legs. Then there was the skirt that clung to her shape and did a lot for it, not that she needed the help, but...

In the span of the few seconds that he spent trying to form a respectful compliment out of thoughts becoming increasingly not-respectful as the time passed, he had raised his eyebrows slightly and looked her up and down several times, licked his lips, and tightened his lingering grip on her hips, utterly unaware of any of it. Just as he was about to finally force out a disappointingly generic word, Summer cut him off with a grin and said, "Actually, don't worry about it. I think you just told me."

He huffed out a chuckle and admitted, "I like the shoes."

"Got a little bit of a shoe fetish?" she inquired quietly, still grinning. "I'm just saying..."

"It's probably more who's wearing them," he replied. "Are you going to be working with... desks?"

"... Yeah," she said a little slowly. "Why?"

As he debated on how detailed to express his increasingly detailed thoughts, he unconsciously moved in closer, and the sudden throat clearing of Steve - who was apparently still present - broke both of their concentrations.

"Anyway," Summer smiled brightly, blushing at little at the interruption and pulling away, "Uh... I'm gonna go check on David and think about where we can go later."

He nodded, and she gave him a quick kiss before darting back to the elevator with a spring in her high-heeled step. He watched her until she was gone, which was when he shook himself out of his thoughts and glanced at Steve, who still looked highly amused.

Bucky rolled his eyes and then made his way back to the couch, sitting down next to his friend and staring at the record player again before quietly saying, "Thank you for... doing that," he gestured to the thing. "Haven't remembered anything that clearly in a long time."

Steve nodded. "Good. And you're welcome. Oh, I thought of something else, too," he said as he started rummaging in the pockets of the hoodie he was wearing. To Bucky's surprise, he ended up producing a pack of cigarettes, of all things, and handed it to him. "Part of the sensory thing. You never did it much around me, because it made me sick, but I think you picked it up from her. Army probably didn't help, though I don't think you were ever too heavy with it. But I figure it might help you remember more."

Taking it from Steve's hand, Bucky muttered a thank you and didn't bother trying to see if he recalled smoking or not, because he knew he wouldn't. But that was the point of Steve giving them to him in the first place, he supposed.

"Just don't make it a habit," Steve said seriously. "Cell regeneration or not, it's still bad for you."

He couldn't help but snort a little at the admonition. He gave a little mock-salute as he pocketed the cigarettes, missing the way Steve's expression softened a little when he did it.

A few moments later, to break the silence that had briefly fallen, Steve said, "So, second date."

"Guess so."

Steve nodded. "Any ideas?"

"Not a single one," Bucky admitted. Steve sighed and nodded, apparently able to feel his pain. Then Bucky muttered, "I think maybe... I should... get... clothes."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "New clothes?"

Bucky gestured vaguely with his hand and said, "She puts so much effort into herself, and... I don't know."

"Okay," Steve nodded, not needing any further explanation. "Well, unfortunately Nat's busy today, so... you might have to rely on my questionable fashion advice."

Bucky was almost convinced then and there to say never mind, but before he could, Steve patted his shoulder and said brightly, "But it'll be fun! Hopefully. We'll leave in a little bit."

His fate sealed, Bucky stifled a groan, suddenly having two things to fret over today. But it was hard to feel too annoyed by anything when he could still feel the distinct sensation of hope running quietly beneath it all - hope that maybe Steve and his stubborn optimism wasn't as stupid as he had originally thought, and maybe he really could remember more and more as time went on.

And if it took more time than he'd like, maybe that could even be all right too, because at least he was making new, good, maybe even better, memories along the way.

**A/N: Thank you all so much for reading & following this story, and for continuing to give great responses to each chapter :D I am super grateful, equally for those of you who have followed from the start and who've just picked it up. You're all awesome :D Also, my thanks to midnightwings96 for being her amazing self, as always :) Love to you all, until next week! :D**


	12. Chapter 12

He wasn't entirely sure how or why he had ended up here, or why he'd left Steve at the previous store to come and wander to this one on his own, and he almost turned around and headed back when the depth of his cluelessness became apparent. But, rather than give in to that particular urge, he stared at the mannequins displayed in the shop's window and figured that as long as he was subjecting himself to this at all, he may as well try and get something decent out of the deal. And the clothes in this particular window looked more modern - he thought - than the kind Steve seemed to gravitate to. Which wasn't actually saying much, but still.

Already feeling stupid, he opened the door and walked in, quickly shoving both hands into his jacket pockets and trying not to wince at the electronic-sounding music that immediately assaulted his ears. It wasn't playing very loudly but hearing it at all was enough to make him grit his teeth and try to ignore it as he did a quick overview of the stacks and racks of clothes in front of him. In the distance, he spotted a worker about to turn around and notice him, so he darted behind the racks before they could start badgering him with offers of (much needed) assistance.

The problem was, as loathe as he was to admit it, he really did need help. What he saw were t-shirts made of bizarrely bright colors containing words and designs that made no sense, pants that came in so many different fits and "washes" and materials that it was stupid, and an entire section of "accessories" that seemed to encompass a lot more than what he anticipated.

In short, this was a horrible idea, and he probably should have just stayed home and made do with what he already had.

About to turn around and head back out, he immediately stopped in his tracks when he looked up and realized, to his chagrin, that he'd been intercepted by the very same worker he'd been trying to avoid.

"Well hello there," the tan, dark haired man drawled with a smile, moderately heavily accented voice an octave or two higher than Bucky would have expected. "You look like you are in desperate need of some guidance."

Despite the truth of that statement, Bucky wasn't sure he wanted to take guidance from a guy dressed in overly tight black shirt with a slightly plunging neckline and tight red pants. "Uh... no, I -"

"Oh yes," the man nodded insistently. "You do. But it's okay - that is what Esteban is here for." At Bucky's blank stare, he clarified with a flourish of his hand, "That would be me. Now, tell me why you're here - what's the occasion?"

He should have bolted when he had the chance. "I -"

"Never mind. Do all your clothes at home look like this?" he asked, gesturing loosely to Bucky's hoodie and jeans with an open grimace. "Because this is doing you no favors, my friend. You know what, let's start from scratch, shall we?"

Opening his mouth to vehemently but politely mumble something before making a run for it, Bucky instantly lost his train of thought when "Esteban" then whipped out a measuring tape from out of nowhere and was suddenly invading his personal space with it. Bucky stepped back automatically, slightly defensively, but Esteban only sighed and said, "How am I going to know what sizes you need if I don't measure you? Stand still."

Gritting his teeth, Bucky went along with it for some reason, still planning to split the first chance he got. But that chance never came, since as soon as the measurements were done, he was almost instantly getting about half a ton's worth of clothes tossed into his arms as he was dragged around the store.

"I don't know what kind of look you're going for with the black hoodie and the gloves," Esteban said, flipping through the racks quickly but carefully, "but the boring grunge look has been over with since before I even came to America. You are so lucky that I am here to help you. Now, what did you say the occasion was?"

Looking down warily at the growing number of clothes in his arms, Bucky managed to answer, "A date."

"Ohhh, a date," Esteban drawled, grinning widely, "of course, I should have known." Then he turned and looked Bucky up and down, in a sort of admiring deep thought. "Hmm..." Just when Bucky was about to freak out, the man snapped his fingers. "I've got it!"

Then Bucky was again being hustled through the store, though this time he became even more alarmed when what appeared to be leather pants got thrown at him. His concern deepened when Esteban asked his shoe size, then threw a pair of leather boots at him before tossing him into a dressing room and exclaiming, "Try on the outfit on top first! And show me when you're done!"

Dropping the pile of clothes somewhat angrily but mostly in lingering bewilderment, Bucky mentally scoffed at the idea of showing the man anything before beginning the daunting task of trying on the... outfit.

At first glance, it seemed non-threatening enough. The shirt was fairly normal, gray but with city names written all over the front of it for some reason, but the pants... was this how men really dressed now, or just men like... Esteban?

"Hurry up, honey, I haven't got all day!"

He never should have walked into this place.

Nonetheless, he put on the outfit one piece at a time, and of course, it all fit perfectly, but it felt weird - the pants, anyway. His memory may have been lacking, but he was fairly sure that he'd never worn anything so tight before, and wasn't the leather boots on top of it slightly overkill? Then again, what did he know?

Looking at his reflection, the first thing that popped into his head was how hard Steve would probably laugh at him later if he actually wore this. Then there was more tapping at the door. "All right, you've had long enough and I've got other guests - I'm poking my head in!"

Frantically, Bucky tore through the pile of clothes to retrieve the sole coat he'd had thrown at him, some kind of men's black peacoat, and he got his left arm into it just before the door cracked open. He might kill this "Esteban" before the day was over.

"Oooh! I am a genius as usual. That's perfect. See? And this is why Esteban does what he does. Your girlfriend or your boyfriend will thank me later. If you try to hide those legs in boring shapeless jeans again, I will personally hunt you down and trash your wardrobe like we're on 'What Not To Wear'."

Then the door closed, and Bucky stared at it for a moment, only half understanding anything the man had just said. Then he looked back at the mirror, suddenly wondering if he really did look as ridiculous as he felt. But what other choice did he have? His current choices for fashion advisor was Steve, who according to the rest of the tower looked mildly "grandpa-fied" half the time, and then there was Esteban, who did this for a living.

Eventually, he decided to just suck it up and go through the rest of the clothes, picking out what was acceptable and what wasn't - like some weird neon green shirt and a plaid belt - and then he mustered up his courage and headed out of the dressing room.

"He's finally done! Am I a genius or what? Come on, I'll ring you up," the almost effervescent man said, ushering him to the front of the store and taking the clothes out of his arms. If he lived to regret this later, he may come back and punch the guy in the face. Maybe.

As the bill racked up, which Bucky ignored, the store's front doors opened, and as Esteban was talking away about something while folding the clothes and placing them in bags, Steve walked up to the counter and asked cheerfully, "Success at last?"

Bucky glanced at him before the widening eyes and knowing grin of Esteban stole his attention and made his eyes narrow suspiciously.

Holding out the two shopping bags for Bucky to take, Esteban winked and said, "Date, huh? Well aren't you two a lucky pair of specimens. I am so jealous."

Steve's jaw dropped a little and he suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable and mildly constipated. Bucky tried to keep his poker face intact, but it ended up looking more like he was violently screaming inside, all while Esteban positively vibrated with glee and focused his knowing gaze on Steve. "You're gonna totally thank me later, trust me."

While Steve choked a little, Bucky yanked the bags to his side and focused on getting out of there as soon as humanly possible, ignoring the lighthearted goodbyes from the overly friendly sales associate. Steve caught up to him quickly, and neither of them said a word until they were safely out of the store and back on the street.

"So..." Steve muttered, "he thought..."

"Yep," Bucky replied blankly, mainly just wanting to forget that ever happened.

Steve was silent for a moment, and the last thing either of them said about the incident was, "I know you're not exactly friendly with Stark to begin with, but I'm just saying - neither of us ever says a word about that to him. Ever. We'd never hear the end of it."

* * *

><p>"Not a problem."<p>

By mid-day, Summer had come up with exactly zero ideas for her own date idea, and in a fit of mild desperation, she cornered Steve in the kitchen about an hour after he and Bucky had returned to the tower.

"What does... well, what did he like to do, back when... you know?" she asked, watching Steve put together a sandwich.

"Uh, well... he did a lot of dancing, but you already knew that," Steve replied, thinking as he walked back and forth from the fridge to the counter, Summer following everywhere he went. "Other than that, movies, baseball games, kind of anything that there was to do back then, we did. He liked to drag me to Coney Island and watch me throw up."

"Oh! Amusement park! Rollercoasters! I didn't think of that," she half-exclaimed, though she immediately frowned a little and asked, "Although, if we went there, would he remember it and... I don't know, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?"

Steve thought for a moment and then answered, "Well, it's a lot different from what it was when we were kids. They closed the first park back in '44 and built two new parks just recently, and it really doesn't look anything like what I remember." He said this a little sadly, but shrugged and added, "I think it's a good idea. If he does recognize anything, he'd only be remembering good things."

She nodded. "It wouldn't be... I don't know... intruding on your guys' memories or something?"

Steve looked at her a little incredulously and chuckled. "No! Not at all. I think it's a good idea. Really."

She nodded. "Okay. Sorry, I just... don't want to like, overstep, or..." At another look from him, she fell silent and smiled. "Sorry. I'm gonna shut up."

He grinned and then asked, "Need a babysitter?"

"Yes," she sighed. "I think so. One time when David was three he rode a carousel and cried for half an hour."

"Ah," Steve nodded. "I feel his pain. Well, I used to. But yeah, leave him here."

She hesitated and then said, "I don't know... he just got over his not eating thing and he's still pretty clingy with me..."

Steve shrugged. "Well, we can give it a try. If it comes down to it, I can always bring him to you."

"Okay," she agreed, happy with that idea. "You're the best. Seriously. Like, I owe you so much, it's disgusting."

Steve waved her off as he chewed a bite of his sandwich. "I kinda feel like it's the opposite. Anyway, go get ready. I doubt the lines have gotten any better since 1943."

She smiled and thanked him again, suddenly feeling extremely excited and totally in her element for once. She could only hope that Bucky would share her enthusiasm for rollercoasters, and that if not, at the very least, seventy years of torture and ice hadn't taken away his sense of fun. This would definitely be a level of fun they'd never even thought about approaching as of yet.

As long as he didn't barf on her, really, she'd be happy.

* * *

><p>After Summer had all but bounced into his room as if from straight off of a trampoline, exclaiming a question about if he wanted to go ride rollercoasters with her, Bucky had agreed slightly reluctantly, only because it took him a minute to remember what a rollercoaster was. Once he had, she told him to get ready fast and then bounced off, leaving him to stare warily at the shopping bags on his floor.<p>

The irony of being more terrified by an outfit than he was by trained killers and his actual enemies was not lost on him, but he seriously did not want to look as idiotic as he feared he would if he actually put that outfit on. But eventually, he decided that he'd look even stupider if he trudged out of his room wearing the same things he'd been wearing for months when everybody knew he'd gotten new stuff that day.

And anyway, he'd already wasted entirely too much thought on the matter anyway.

So, he threw the outfit on without really looking at it, fought with his hair for a minute before giving up because it was determined to have a mind of its own that day, and then he somewhat angrily pulled on the still-possibly-overkill boots. Then he marched out of his room, determined not to think about any of it anymore.

He heard Steve talking with the apparently newly arrived Natasha in the kitchen before he stepped into it, not looking at either of them as he opened the refrigerator and grabbed a water bottle out of it. After he closed it, Steve glanced over his shoulder towards him in the middle of taking a drink from his own bottle, and he promptly did a double take and choked. Natasha peeked around him to see what the big deal was, then grinned and unabashedly took it all in.

"Bucky, what... are you wearing?" Steve asked, eyes wide, as Bucky stared back defiantly and took a forcibly nonchalant sip of water.

"I have no idea," he replied honestly. "That guy at the store picked it out."

"You mean the... guy."

"Yeah."

"It looks good," Natasha interjected. Bucky's instant reply of a glare made her add, "I'm serious." Then she patted Steve's shoulder and said, "You should dress like that one of these days."

Pretty sure that she was making fun of him, Bucky tossed the bottle on the counter and turned to march right back in his room and change the stupid clothes, only to nearly collide with Summer as she came bounding out of the hallway.

"Oh sorry! I was just - uh... whoa..."

He watched as Summer's eyes moved from his face to his feet and then back up again, then back down, and her jaw went slack as words apparently failed her. He held his breath, unsure if she was about to start laughing at him or blush so hard she'd actually morph into a tomato.

Her face turning a furious shade of red gave him his answer. She backed away by a step and muttered, "You're... you're actually trying to kill me. That's not nice. I... don't remember what I came out here for. I'll just... damn."

She then stumbled off, back down the hall, and he decided that maybe the outfit could stay after all. He glanced back towards the kitchen, where Natasha wore a smug smile and said, "See? And to think you doubted me."

He snorted derisively and headed back to his room to grab the coat he forgot, hoping it was worth a day full of walking in weirdly constricting pants and the agony of having to accept an actual compliment from Natasha. Still, if nothing else, it was worth it just to watch Steve choke and Summer die a little inside.

* * *

><p>Summer was uncharacteristically quiet a bit later, as she sat next to the suddenly male model-esque Bucky in the backseat of a cab on their way to their date. She had changed into her nicest comfortable outfit, which she hadn't had much competing options for, but dark skinny jeans and flats paired with a flowy black and white lace top under a burgundy coat (almost as nice as the one she'd lost with the rest of her clothes back home) just seemed underwhelming compared to what was next to her. The one thing she thought she had going for her was the slightly lower-than-usual neckline she was sporting, which wasn't too major given how she assumed the park would be relatively full of kids, but it was enough that she noticed his eyes stopping there for half a second before meeting her eyes everytime he looked at her.<p>

Still, the question remained - was he just trying to do everything he could to visually torture her? She'd caught herself staring at his leather-clad legs so many times already, and they'd only been the cab for five minutes.

"You're quiet."

She blinked and realized she'd been doing it again. Dang it. "Oh, yeah, sorry. Just, uh... thinking," she explained half-honestly.

"What about?"

She met his gaze and saw that it was slightly playful. "Rudy Giuliani. He was an awesome mayor and... it's sad he's not... anymore." What was she even saying? He hadn't been mayor for years!

"... Right," Bucky said, looking at her as if she had two heads, and frankly, maybe she did have two heads.

She rolled her eyes. "Actually, I'm trying not to drool. Like you didn't already know that. Are you trying to kill me?"

He smiled faintly and said, "No, I walked into a store and some guy threw this at me. I feel like a moron."

"Well, you look like sex, so," she replied, wincing almost instantly at her words before she decided that she didn't really care. "It's almost disgusting."

"Disgusting?" he squinted.

"Yeah, like I need to take a shower just because I looked at you." She grinned at the way he chuckled at that. Their driver was on his phone talking in what sounded like Arabic, so thankfully, nobody was paying attention to their conversation. "It's super unfair."

He kept his faint smile, glancing out the window, and she let herself stare at his profile for a moment before shaking her head and trying to think of something halfway decent to say. It took her awhile, but she finally thought of something non-leather related. "Oh, what was with the giant record player in the living room?"

"Steve bought it," Bucky said, looking away from the window. "He was playing old records to help me remember."

"Oh, that's a good idea," she replied. "Did it help?"

He nodded, glancing down towards his lap. "Yeah. It actually did."

"That's great!" She smiled. "What did you remember? Not that you have to tell me if you don't want to, but..."

He finally looked at her, his expression a little strange and unreadable for a moment, but then the cab came to a halt at their stop, and she made a mental note to pick up the conversation later - if he wanted to.

Once they were outside the rather sprawling, definitely modern and well-expanded upon amusement park, Summer glanced at her companion and asked, "Seem familiar?"

He shrugged. "Not really."

"That's all right," she shrugged. "Maybe it'll all come back to you once you get off a ride and puke."

* * *

><p>The temperatures outside were getting warmer these days, and it made wearing a coat as they strolled through the amusement park rather uncomfortable after awhile, but Bucky didn't have much of a choice in the matter. The gloves on his hands were equally annoying, and he soon found himself rather envious of the carefree people passing by who didn't have to think about things like causing mass hysteria by taking off their jacket and showing the world their metal "robo-arm", as Summer called it.<p>

Speaking of her, he suspected that she was keeping her own coat on for his sake, but before he could say something about it, she spotted something in the distance and grabbed his hand before heading there excitedly.

Nothing looked familiar, and he wasn't sure that he particularly enjoyed the fact that there were people everywhere - even if none of them cared one bit about him or even looked his way - but he kept to himself how little he expected to enjoy himself, the thought of putting a damper on Summer's excitement nearly unbearable.

She led him through a small gate, and then they reached the back of a line as she glanced up at him and pointed forward. "I think this okay to start with. Looks like a pretty standard coaster, nothing too ridiculous. The sign didn't say anything about going upside down, so I think it's a good starting point. What do you think?"

He shrugged. "I guess."

She smiled at his very neutral reply and said, "I have it on good authority that you used to love these things. If you don't though, it's okay. There's other things to do if rollercoasters aren't your thing anymore."

"They seem to be your thing," he noted, taking in the way she was bouncing on her heels even though a rather long line stood in front of them.

She nodded enthusiastically and flashed him an almost child-like smile. "Oh yeah. I haven't been to one of these in forever. I think I was sixteen or something, so almost ten years ago. Ugh! That's way too long."

Absently, in his head, he subtracted ten years from the current year, then decided to figure out what year she was born in for no discernible reason. Once he figured that out, he recalled what year he was born in, then shook his head and ignored how weird it all was as the line started to move.

After the first half of the line got on the ride, he watched what he could see of it and still didn't think much of it one way or another. Summer, however, was happily squeezing his hand and still bouncing slightly. When it was nearly time for them to board, he leaned down and murmured near her ear, "It was worth coming just to see you bouncing like a kid."

She grinned up at him. "I'm actually controlling myself right now. If I actually jumped up and down, I'd smack myself in the face with these things," she said, gesturing to her chest. He laughed at the image that put in his head just as it was their turn to finally get on the ride.

Luckily, he didn't end up squished next to any random people, because they got the very back portion of the seats and he ended up on the far end of it. Summer happily clutched the restraints that were pulled down over their heads and shoulders, but he didn't bother to grab his, still thinking very little of the ride.

Summer was overflowing with excitement as the ride began its creep up the first hill, and by the time they reached the top, he had nearly zoned out so effectively that when it began a sudden plunge straight down, his hands flew to the restraints and his gasp would have been audible had the ride not been noisy and had nobody been screaming.

The ride was just under two minutes, and after two loops, several more plunges, and enough twisting and turning to make his head nearly literally spin, it finally groaned to a halt, and while Summer was absolutely glowing with the lingering thrill of it all, Bucky was still clutching the restraints and didn't quite want to let go even as they sprung off of him.

Half-stumbling out of the cart, he swallowed down a lump in his throat and stopped for a moment, waiting for the world to stop spinning and his stomach to stop twisting.

"Hey, you okay?" Summer asked, suddenly at his side and putting a hand to his arm. He straightened quickly and nodded.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good," he said, trying to brush her off, but he wasn't exactly good yet.

"Wow," she grinned. "That wasn't even a spinny ride and you look like you're about to barf."

He shook his head, and in a few moments, after the spinning finally stopped, he took a breath and looked to her expectantly. She grinned and took his hand, leading them off to wherever she wanted to go next. "Okay, so we'll avoid the crazier ones for now. And definitely nothing spinny."

"Just pick whatever you want," he told her. "I'll be fine."

"Maybe, but I just really don't like getting puked on. Paul used to throw up on me all the time when we were kids and I try to avoid it as much as I can." When he looked at her slightly questioningly, she explained, "One time i ended up covered in slimy candy and pickles... he was a gross kid."

Not particularly wanting to know anymore, Bucky let that one go and then let her drag him to the next ride that caught her interest. After the next few times, he was mostly used to them, and at some point, he started genuinely enjoying the rides. Whether it was due to the rides themselves or Summer's infectious love for them, he wasn't sure, but one thing he was positive of - he loved the way that she squealed and relished every second of each ride, and that alone made coming here worth it.

* * *

><p>In some ways, it was basically the perfect day - scouring an amusement park she'd never been to, bouncing from ride to ride with her ridiculously attractive leather-clad boyfriend, all of it taking her mind off of everything bad that had happened recently and placing it solely on having fun. It was an absolute blast, and she even managed to get them both on the biggest ride in the whole park, despite her initial concerns that it might be a bit too much for him. He proved her wrong, and she could tell that he really was enjoying himself.<p>

By the time the sun had halfway set, she was starving, so for the dinner portion of the date, they grabbed overpriced and greasy food at the closest cafe they could find within the park. It was a far cry from their first date with its quaint little Italian restaurant and candlelit atmosphere, but it all felt much more at ease and natural this time around, and she wouldn't have had the day go any differently if she could have.

Having done a fair amount of Googling on the area before coming, however, she did have one more idea to try out after they'd had their fill of the park. Rather than head straight home, they took a somewhat chilly walk down a nearby beach.

It was a clear night, so the moon and stars were out in full force, dimly lighting the night along with a handful of boats out in the water's distance and homes on their other side. It suddenly dawned on her, early in their walk as she grasped his hand, that decades ago, he may have walked this very beach hand in hand with another woman - or maybe a lot of other women - before even her mother had come into existence. After all, this was Brooklyn, his old backyard, and it was a little surreal to be here with him.

"So, anything jog your memory yet?" she asked, her shoes dangling from her free hand while she tried not to giggle at him treading through the sand in his leather boots.

"Maybe... not sure yet," he said quietly, looking out towards the water, matching her slow steps.

"Have fun?" she asked with a slight grin.

"Yeah," he nodded, turning back to her as they walked. "I wasn't sure at first, but I had fun."

"Good," she smiled. "I kinda feel like our time together has been super serious and kinda traumatizing half the time, with things blowing up and people trying to kill you at every turn, so... I guess it was time for some actual fun. Mix it up a little bit."

She didn't expect him to frown at those words, but he did. Then he asked quietly, "Is that... what you think, or..."

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that," she hurriedly assured him. "I wasn't complaining, I just - you know, it seemed like a good idea to just... act silly for awhile and... not think about all the heavy stuff, I guess."

He seemed to understand, and she breathed quietly in relief. Absently, she reached down and disentangled their hands long enough to peel the unnecessary glove from his right one, then placed her hand back in his while they continued to walk.

The truth was, this was one of those things she'd always wanted to do - walk hand in hand with some gorgeous, awesome guy down a quiet beach, under a moonlit sky and every cliche imaginable, because darn it, cliches were cliches for a reason. And it was nice, beautiful, even, but it was as perfect as it was because of who she was walking next to. She could have been walking down a questionable street on the rougher side of Brooklyn under a partly cloudy sky and she would have felt the same warmth that she was feeling right now. And knowing that somehow made her happier than any picturesque stroll on a beach could have done.

Though, there was definitely something to be said for the beach, no matter what. If only the water could have been a bit warmer, she could have sat and let it wash over her toes while he played with her hair and eventually laid her down in the sand and kissed her for all she was worth...

"You're quiet again."

Somewhat snapping out of her thoughts, she blushed slightly and said, "Just thinking."

"What about?"

"... Sex on the beach," she blurted.

He stopped walking. "... What?"

Mentally punching herself in the face, she laughed a bit nervously and said, "It's gotta be weird, right? Sand everywhere... like... everywhere..."

She expected his usual bewildered look or maybe an amused chuckle, not his hand reaching out and grabbing her coat by its first few buttons and pulling her much closer. She sucked in a breath of surprise, smiling a little when she saw the faint grin on his own face as it grew closer to hers. And she especially didn't expect him to breathe out an inch from her lips, "You're so damn cute."

And then she had her perfect beach kiss, which was better than any of the ones she'd ever seen in romantic comedies, and though she was fairly sure that she hadn't been called "cute" since around kindergarten, it was the way that he said it that made her melt.

As much as she had seen and been around him recently, which was a lot more than ever before, there had somehow been less time for these things than when their time together was scarce. She had been trying to settle in and get David back to his normally functioning level, getting ready for her interview, and Bucky did not follow her around like a lost puppy, thankfully, but it resulted in her passing out most nights without even telling him goodnight or getting a decent kiss or two in during some point in the day. In fact, an annoyingly nagging little voice in her head had been wondering if it was on purpose, if he was pulling away a bit for some reason, but the way that he kissed her now silenced that voice rather beautifully.

When he pulled away and the kiss ended, all too soon, she said somewhat breathlessly, "We need to make time for this every day. I don't care if it's in the morning or at night or whenever, or if I'm asleep and you have to wake me up. I just... I kinda need this."

He nodded in agreement, and she pulled down for another kiss. The air around them suddenly didn't feel so chilly, and she poured several days' worth of missed touches into the kiss before he broke away and muttered near her ear, "It's hard to stop."

"Almost impossible," she agreed, her words barely above a sigh as he pulled her coat aside to press his lips to her neck. "It gets harder and... harder..."

He hummed in response and then kissed her lips again, and she shuddered, wrapping her arms around his neck partially just to stay on her feet. He could go from zero to utterly devouring before she had a chance to begin to wrap her brain around it, and one of these days she would lose every last ounce of will to resist and beg him to end their self-imposed abstinence.

But, it seemed that when she would near that point, he would pull away before she could, and this time was no different. She was equally grateful and frustrated for it, but how could she complain about anything after the day that she'd had?

Her forehead against his, she managed to say something for once that didn't embarrass her in the slightest. "Thank you for today."

His eyes met hers and the corner of his mouth twitched as he replied, "Everything was your idea."

"Yeah," she said quietly, "but you're what made it perfect."

She saw a lot of things flicker in his eyes then, and she couldn't figure out what a single one meant. His answering kiss, however, she did understand, and that was more than enough.

* * *

><p>Whatever Bucky expected to find upon arriving back to the 36th floor of Stark Tower, it was not a small gathering of everyone he recognized from the tower sitting in front of the nearly theater-sized television watching what appeared to be black and white videos from the '40s. From the minute he stepped off the elevator, he saw Steve, Natasha, Sam, Stark, even Thor - the last of which was confirmed by the sudden widening eyes and near-squeal of the woman standing next to him.<p>

He still didn't get what was supposed to be so great about the guy.

David came barreling out of nowhere directly at Summer's legs, knocking his hand out of hers before she picked him up in a hug and Steve called out, "Hey! Have a good time?"

Bucky nodded and let Summer do the talking, shedding his jacket while she alternated between glancing at Thor every other second and telling Steve about Bucky almost puking. Bucky looked at the TV, which was paused on a frame of Steve in his old uniform, and he might have been interested in seeing the video if not for the group currently watching it. He started heading for his room, where he planned to peel off the leather he was wearing and stuff it deep in his closet where he'd never find it again, but Steve had other plans.

"Hey, Bucky, come sit down. You're in a couple of these, I've been saving them for when you got back."

Bucky nodded and didn't bother arguing, slightly nervous at the prospect of seeing such a video. He made his way to an empty couch, ignoring the not friendly nor unfriendly stare from Tony Stark as he sat. Steve beckoned Summer to come and sit with them, then got up and to change out the DVD as he explained, "SHIELD preserved a bunch of our videos, and Tony here was nice enough to convert them to DVDs for me."

"I'm helpful like that," Tony shrugged, taking a drink from the small glass in his hand. Bucky wasn't sure if he'd ever seen the man without a drink in his hand. "By the way, these are all really boring so far. Weren't there hot nurses that hung around Army bases back then? My dad sure made it sound like it."

"Well, you're probably about to see one or two," Steve replied, heading back to the couch just as Summer took a seat next to Bucky. Thor noticed her staring and smiled brightly.

"Lady..." his brows furrowed briefly before he guessed, "... Solstice? No, that's not right..."

"Summer," she giggled. Bucky shot her a side-glare that she completely ignored.

"Ah, that's right! Lady Summer! How have you fared since we last met?"

"Pretty good," she smiled. "Except for my house blowing up. But that happens, right?"

"Oh... I am... sorry?" Thor replied in slight confusion, maybe unsure why she was giggling about her house getting blown up.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Anyway, on with the show. Some of us have girlfriends to go and ravish, can't spend all night listening to awkward small talk."

"Actually," Natasha remarked, looking around the room, "I think that's every adult male in this room aside from... Sam."

Sam rolled his eyes at the chorus of sarcastic "awww"s that followed her comment, just before Natasha gestured to Bucky and added, "Oh, and I forgot the abstinence kids over there."

While Bucky glared at her, she smiled and Tony nearly spat out his drink. "What? What did I miss? Who's got a chastity belt?"

"Very funny," Steve said, "I'm pushing play now -"

"Hold on, George Washington, this is important," Tony interrupted. "First of all, why, and second of all - why?"

Bucky glanced at Summer to find her suddenly looking rather like she wanted the floor to swallow her up, but before Bucky could defend her honor - or something - Steve shot Tony a glare and said, "Drop it, would you? It's personal, and you barely even know them."

"Hey now, don't get touchy," Tony said, holding up his hands in surrender. "Blame a guy for being curious about what's happening in his own tower. Or what's not happening."

Steve then aggressively pushed the play button on the remote in his hand, and Bucky muttered an unnecessary apology to Summer that she immediately shrugged off before they both turned their attentions to the TV.

The slightly grainy black and white images on the screen started out shaky before focusing on a small group of smiling guys in Army uniforms, and Steve explained, "So this was taken a couple days after we got back from Austria. Everybody got patched up and had a couple decent meals and then this happened."

"This" was what looked like an old-fashioned party on the base, or at least the closest thing to one that they could manage at the time. The camera panned to four or five guys, two of whom had managed to get their hands on a trumpet and saxophone while the others were making do with what they could find laying around, like pots and pans, but everybody seemed quite happy with the result - the lack of audio was almost a shame.

Bucky recognized a few faces as they came and went, mostly those of the men who would go on to be his fellow Howling Commandos and a few others. Every time he saw a picture of them or they came up in conversation with Steve, he couldn't help but silently wonder why none of them were chosen for HYDRA's experiments while he was. Of course, had Steve not freed them all, maybe they all eventually would have faced the same fate.

Stirring him out of his thoughts, the camera shifted then to Steve, who didn't seem all that aware of the camera as he talked to a woman Bucky instantly recognized as the ever-legendary Peggy. He glanced at Steve, then at Natasha as she commented, "She was definitely a knockout."

"Literally," Steve grinned.

Then Bucky looked back to the screen, did a double take, and then felt his eyes widen just by a fraction. He was suddenly staring at himself, and not just himself, but a woman whose face he'd remembered only the day before.

He was a little gaunt, a little too thin, but he was smiling, and they were dancing. Exuberantly dancing, swing dancing amid a small group of other couples, and they were both clearly good at it.

The woman - Vivian, he reminded himself - was dressed in a nurse's uniform, her hair pinned up under her little white hat in curls that fell more and more free from their restraints as he tossed her around with all the ease of someone pretending they hadn't been under torture only days before. He moved like an old pro, which he supposed he had been, flipping her like it had been the most natural thing in the world to do back then.

He stared at the smile on his own face, the identical one on hers, and he barely heard Stark's whistling or Thor's grunts of approval. All at once, it was almost like he was back in that very moment, close enough to touch it, and he could remember the dance and more, maybe a lot more if he sat down and let the vision flood his mind...

His feet almost twitched with the memory of dancing, something that had obviously once been second nature for him, but he hadn't been able to believe it until now, until he had seen it with his own eyes. Now he felt silly for ever doubting it. Watching himself, watching the steps he and the woman took, he could almost predict each one, and remember what it felt like to dance and move like that. Though the movie was silent, he could hear the distinct, seductive, gorgeous jazz music tickling his mind's ear, and how could he ever forget what it had felt like to dance with her?

Her...

There was something else nudging from within, a different scene from the same place, and he welcomed it with metaphorical open arms.

_After Peggy chided Steve for being late, and after Bucky himself had led a highly necessary cheer for Captain America, he had to steel himself and cover up a wince at the pain that the effort had unexpectedly caused him. He reasoned that it was just the walking all the way here that was to blame, that and living off little more than crumbs for the last few months, because it definitely had nothing to do with the days and days of injections and tests and tortures that had left him mumbling deliriously as he flirted with knocking on death's door..._

_But then there was a flash of very familiar, soft red in front of him, and his thoughts faded into the background noise as he stared at the nurse looking up at him with slightly moist eyes and red lips caught between a smile and a noticeable quiver._

_"I should slap you," she said, with absolutely no conviction and a whole lot of shaking in her words._

_"And here I was hoping you'd missed me at least a little bit," he replied, unable to stop from grinning at her. He could see how she was looking him over, could see the slight horror flickering through her green eyes as if what they did to him was scrawled out in plain English on his forehead, and that was the only thing about the moment that he didn't like._

_She shook her head. "You ever do this to me again, and I swear, I'll kill you myself."_

_"I could live with that." Then he grabbed her and kissed her, because if there was one thing he'd earned the right to do following his ordeal over the last few months, it was most definitely that._

_There were some whistles and a chuckle that sounded a lot like the now freakishly-tall Steve, but he paid them no mind, because for the first time in a long time, he almost felt good again._

He snapped out of it when that part of the film came to an end, then switched to a different part. His head ached a little at the rush of memories, but it was the sort of ache that was such a relief that it almost felt good, like the return of sensation after a long period of numbness. He glanced around the room, saw the knowing look on Steve's face before glancing at Summer and the somewhat tentative smile that she gave him.

He knew they'd both understand why he had to stand up and leave the room a few moments later, after the film ended. He was on the cusp of recovering a substantial piece of the puzzle within his mind, and he refused to do so while Tony Stark was cracking jokes in the same room.

* * *

><p>"Well... that was riveting, Cap."<p>

Steve glanced at Tony and shrugged. "I know it's a shocking idea that not everything is always for your benefit, but..."

"Yeah, unfortunately," Tony replied, glancing down sadly at his now-empty glass.

"Is your friend all right?" Thor asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

"I think so," Steve nodded. "I'm sure he just needed some time to think on his own. He's still trying to get it all back. I was hoping this would help."

Meanwhile, Summer sat back and watched as most of the Avengers sat around and discussed her boyfriend, her own head still spinning a bit from the video. She'd never been one for dancing, but seeing that made her wish with an unexpected desperation that she could dance with him like that.

And that nurse! Yeah, clearly, her theory about him and fondue had been on the money. Though, if she had to guess by his face in that video, it had been a bit more than fondue.

She returned to the present when she felt eyes on her, and she glanced up to find the culprit, as, of course, her sort-of new employer.

"So anyway, about the abstinence thing, I'm just curious - wh-"

"Stark!" Steve half-shouted in exasperation before Summer could even start stuttering out a response. "For God's sake, she works for you now!"

"So?"

"So, that's basically sexual harassment," Steve pointed out.

Tony almost laughed, then squinted and asked, "What do you know about sexual harassment? Back in your day, that's what they called flirting."

"SHIELD made him watch educational videos when they hired him," Natasha supplied helpfully.

Ignoring her, Steve said, "No, back in my day, we beat up the punks that talked to women like that."

"Geez, take it easy, Cap," Tony sighed. Then he turned back to Summer and asked, "Do you feel sexually harassed right now?"

She blinked and muttered, "Uh... no?"

"Good. So is it the Edward Cullen factor, except instead of being afraid of sucking all your blood, he might accidentally rip your head off when he's -"

She covered David's ears while Steve exclaimed, "Her five year old is right there!"

With a huff, Tony stood up and said, "Fine, you know what? Fine. Since I'm clearly offending Grandpa's morals, I'll just leave. Hey Thor, come with me, I've got something I need you to smash with that hammer."

A little sad that the Asgardian eye candy was leaving, Summer realized that she was actually starting to get used to all of this bizarre stuff. She was also still a little giddy from Thor calling her "Lady Solstice" earlier, but mostly, she was curious about the girl in the video.

"So... that girl," she asked when the room had grown quiet again. "Were they serious?"

"... Sort of. It was kind of complicated. I'm sure he would rather be the one to tell you about her once he remembers. And I think he does now."

She nodded. "I mean, it's not weird to me. I've always thought there was no way he didn't have something serious back then. Because he was... yeah." When Steve chuckled at her, she added, "Should I leave him alone tonight, then? While he thinks?"

Steve shrugged. "Not all night. I think it helps if he has someone to talk to after he first remembers."

She nodded, though a part of her felt as if Steve would be a much better choice than her, since he had been there and she obviously hadn't.

Still, she waited. She went about her night and her usual routine with David, and it whittled down the next few hours into pleasantly mundane blurs that ended with her little boy falling asleep in her arms. He was doing much better now than he had been just a few days ago, and his calmer state was like Xanax to her own nerves. When he was off, so was she, but when he was good, she felt great.

She moved him into his own bed after her arm started to hurt, and then, dressed still in the clothes she'd worn on the date, she quietly asked JARVIS to inform her if he woke up while she was gone before slipping out of the room. Having a British-voiced electronic butler was awesome, she had to admit.

After making her way down the hall, she found Bucky's door unlocked, as it normally was, and she knocked slightly before cracking it open. When she saw and heard no sign of him, she opened the door all the way and looked inside, but still saw no sign of him. She was about to close the door and go look for him in the common area, but then a cool breeze blowing gently through the curtains near his bed caught her attention.

Hoping that it didn't mean that he'd unexpectedly jumped out the window, she walked to the window and found out that it wasn't a window but a glass door she'd never noticed before.

The door was just slightly ajar, so she slid it open a bit further and peeked through it. What she saw wasn't big enough to be called a balcony, more like a slightly large ledge with a rail on it, but whatever it was technically called, Bucky was sitting on it with his boots dangling off of the edge. He glanced up at her, and that was when she got a whiff of smoke and a glimpse of the cigarette in his right hand. Interesting.

He was also still wearing his clothes from earlier, and that and his somewhat disheveled hair helped to make her suddenly find smoking attractive for the first time in her 25 years.

"Is this a bad time? Because I was just checking on you..."

He shook his head. "No." Then he scooted over slightly, and once she realized he was making room for her, she carefully walked out of the door and tried not to look down while she settled in next to him. A thin railing separating her and thirty-six floor drop was a little disconcerting to think about.

"So," she said after a moment, gesturing to his hand, "new habit?"

He shook his head, looking at the cigarette and explaining, "Old one. Steve thought it might help me remember."

That made sense. "Did it?"

She watched him put the thing to his lips, inhale slowly, and then let the smoke pour from his mouth as she failed horribly at trying to make herself think it was disgusting no matter how good he looked doing it. "Yeah."

"Good," she smiled, hugging her arms a bit to fight off the chill in the night air. "Want to talk about it?"

He glanced at her with just a hint of unease, like he wasn't sure if he should tell her or not, but after a moment or two, he tossed the cigarette over the railing - litterbug - and leaned his head back against the glass behind him and said, "All right."

* * *

><p>Remembering, he discovered, was utterly bizarre. Before, when it was only the smallest bits and pieces that would come to him and leave almost as quickly, it was an exercise in frustration and anger and not much else. But tonight, he felt like he'd finally managed to grab a big piece of the puzzle, and now some of the smaller pieces had a place to go and fit next to. It was completely exciting and amazing, and yet it came with an underlying sadness that he couldn't easily shake.<p>

Vivian, he now knew, had been more than a girl he'd taken dancing once or twice before he enlisted and she became an Army nurse. As it turned out, he had known her for some time in his past life, and she had been just as important as Steve had hinted at the day before.

Music had brought back the memory of her face and her name. The video had brought back the memory of dancing and of returning from the dead to greet her back in the land of the living. Then so much more had followed those visions that he still felt dizzy from it all.

"The girl in the video," he began quietly, "was named Vivian."

"She was very pretty."

She was. Very much so.

"Were you guys serious?"

The nice thing was, he didn't feel strange at all about talking to Summer about this. He had thought he might, but he didn't. "I think I wanted to marry her."

"... Wow. Definitely serious, then."

"Yeah but it was... it changed a lot," he said, trying to keep it all straight in his head. "Something was always in the way or one of us was always gone, I think..."

"So, kind of off and on?" Summer guessed.

He nodded, supposing that was one way of putting it. He couldn't remember every last detail yet, but he remembered her. He remembered her smile, her laugh, how smart she was, and how he always seemed to end up back in her life one way or another, despite seeming remember a steady stream of obstacles in their way. He remembered that she got along very well with Steve, and if he had to guess (which he did), he was pretty sure that his parents had liked her too.

Then, with the first experimental puff of the cigarettes that Steve had given him, he'd suddenly been back in her bed - or maybe his, it was hard to tell - and she was wearing a grin and little else as she placed one to his mouth. He inhaled and called her a bad influence as he exhaled, mirroring her grin, which made her laugh and point out their current position, which seemed to refute his point.

And then there was more. A lot more, and not all of it pleasant. There was flashes of fights and frustration, but what he remembered most was seeing her face after surviving HYDRA by the skin of his teeth. That was the defining moment, the one that unlocked the others, and the one that made him realize that they'd spoken quite seriously about getting married just before he headed back out to fight again, this time at Steve's side.

It was incredibly strange to remember having once felt such things for someone and then remember nothing of it until it suddenly came back in a rush. It was even stranger to realize that she was most likely dead now and that she'd had to mourn him twice, yet here he was, looking no older than he had back when they had been together.

"I can't get over seeing you dance," Summer said, rousing him from his wandering thoughts. He glanced at her to find her smiling lazily at him. "It was kind of amazing. Makes me wish you could teach me how to do it."

He returned her grin and said, "I remember dancing now, a lot more than I did before."

"Could you do it again?" she asked, a glint of excitement in her eyes.

"Maybe," he said noncommittally. "Not sure."

Then a moment or two passed, and then Summer quietly said, "It must be really weird and kind of hard to remember all of this. Especially since she's probably... not here anymore. I'm sorry."

It _was_ weird, and it _did_ hurt. He knew he'd be adjusting to what he'd learned for the next couple of days, and probably picking Steve's brain to fill in the details that he couldn't remember. It was a lot to take in. But in the midst of it all, something unexpected was starting to come to light at the forefront of his mind.

For everything he could remember about Vivian, about how enamored he'd been with her and ready to make her his wife once the war was over, something about it almost didn't make sense. Not because he wasn't remembering it right, because he was - no, it was something else. Something that seemed to nag at him even more once Summer had climbed out on this little oversized ledge with him.

He had wanted to marry this woman from his past. He had loved her - he could remember loving her, remember the feelings that had seemed to reach a pinnacle on that Army base in Europe. But if that was all true, then why did it all seem somehow dwarfed in comparison to what he felt right now?

He looked at Summer, sitting there hugging herself and enduring the cold for his sake, the faint wind blowing gently through her hair that looked almost fully black under the night sky, and he stared at her like she was some complicated equation that he was missing a crucial variable for. What was he missing? What was his brain trying to tell him?

Then she sighed and glanced up at him before smiling a little sheepishly and saying, "Don't take this the wrong way, because I really am incredibly happy that you remembered something big, but man... she was just stunning, and it's been kind of nice knowing until now that you haven't really been able to compare me to anyone else. Now I've probably got a lot more to... live up to or compete with, or... something."

And then, suddenly, there it was, like a giant flashing arrow sign from an old cartoon, telling him exactly what he'd been missing. What Summer was afraid of was, in fact, the complete and utter opposite of reality.

Now he did indeed have something to compare her to. The only woman, as far as he knew, that he'd ever considered asking to be his wife. A woman that had indeed been stunning, brilliant, the best one he'd ever found, until he had "died".

And yet, rather than Summer pale in comparison to his past, it seemed that his past seemed to pale in comparison to her.

He didn't realize that he was staring at her a little wide-eyed until she looked up at him and then suddenly grew concerned. "Are... you okay?"

He blinked a couple times and nodded, but he wasn't okay. No, he was absolutely screwed, because he had been completely oblivious to how deep his own feelings ran for this woman, and now that he had finally woken up to them, there was no going back.

He was dizzy again.

"Are you sure?"

He swallowed down a lump in his throat and looked away before she realized how very not okay he was. He didn't have the slightest clue how to verbalize any of this. He didn't even want to. She would probably choke in shock and accidentally fall off the ledge if he even tried.

But then he realized he'd never said anything back to her comment about comparing herself to his newly recovered memories. And if he couldn't say anything, then he had to at least do something.

But he did nothing for a long time, staring off in the distance and trying to recover from the shock of the last few moments. Eventually, the cold must have finally gotten to her, because Summer muttered something about grabbing a coat, and that of all things was what finally spurred him into action.

He said her name, stopping her before she'd gotten to her feet, and he grabbed the top of her arm and drew her closer. Her skin was cold, and she was shivering slightly, so he pulled her against his chest and kept his even colder metal arm away from her as his right hand left her arm to trail to her cheek. She looked up at him questioningly, and he wished that he could coherently answer her, but he simply could not. He'd have to save that for a time when all of this had fully sunken in and he could say the words the way that she deserved to hear them.

So, for now, he lowered his lips to hers almost excruciatingly slowly. He kissed her differently than he ever had before, trying to express through touch what his words couldn't, and he felt her shiver from something other than the cold. He let his other hand come up and help his other one cradle her face, his eyes shut tightly as he poured all of his concentration and will into showing her, as best as he could, how irrevocably special and unmovable her place in his life was.

When he drew away from the kiss, letting his forehead fall against hers, he opened his eyes just enough to see hers still closed as she breathed through her mouth. Then she looked up at him, her cheeks flushed and expression mildly bewildered, and he kissed her again, before she could say a word and break the moment.

He knew he'd never be able to fully express everything swirling around his head through a few soft touches and a handful of kisses, but right now, they were all that he had. She deserved more, and eventually, he'd be able to give her more. But for now, he kissed her as if he'd never felt it so deeply before in his life, and the thing was, as he now knew, he truly had not.

**A/N: this chapter was one of my favorites to write. Leather-wearing and smoking Bucky was a distinct contributing factor to that, not gonna lie :p And Esteban was another highlight. He may be around in future chapters occasionally :) Anyway, my usual big huge thanks to all of you wonderful readers and reviewers for continuing to read & support this story. Thank you SO MUCH. And thank you to midnightwings96, as always, for being indispensably awesome and helping out a LOT with this story. See you all next week :D **


	13. Chapter 13

As it turned out, being assistant to an assistant in a corporate office was not the boring job Summer initially anticipated it to be. Mundane was a better fitting word, at least once the first week had passed and she had gotten the hang of it.

Rather than sit behind a desk doing who knows what all day, she was on her feet and out the door more times than she could count. Whether it was getting someone's lunch, dry cleaning, even shuttling things like small boxes and envelopes between Stark Tower and other businesses like a messenger girl, she spent more of her day in cabs than she did in Pepper Pott's office. And if there was one thing she had learned in that first week, it was that gel insoles for the heels she forced herself to wear were nothing short of gifts from the very heavens above.

It was near noon on her one-week anniversary of starting the new job that she handed her boss, Pepper's actual assistant, a bag containing her lunch as the woman somewhat angrily slammed her phone down into its cradle before looking up and snatching the bag and setting it down on her desk. "Thanks," she muttered, glancing at her computer and then saying without looking up, "Go take your break."

The assistant, whose name was Deanna, had been relatively nice enough, but she had an air about her of being constantly overworked and perpetually irritated, except for when Pepper was nearby, which was when she'd smile brightly and act perfectly cheerful. Summer had expected her demeanor to improve since she now had an assistant to ease the load, but no such luck yet.

"Okay," Summer replied, lingering in front of her desk. "Did you need anything else before I -"

"No," Deanna monotoned, picking up her phone and pushing the buttons harder than was necessary. "I'd hurry up and go if I were you. I'm gonna need you to take the phone for me when you get back."

She smiled. "Oh okay. Awesome." Deanna looked up at her slightly incredulously, but Summer shrugged and then headed off. Answering the phone meant sitting down, and sitting down somewhere other than in the backseat of a cab would be a nice change for that particular day.

She headed to the elevator, down through a corridor containing other little cubicles and a number of people she passed along the way. Some of them had Deanna's harried expression, others were just busy, and a few smiled and nodded as she walked past them. So far, most everybody had been a lot nicer than she'd expected, and she couldn't understand why Deanna seemed so miserable all the time. Maybe it was just the fact that Summer's employment history was less than lustrous, but this job was, so far, awesome.

Once she got to the elevator, she was smiling slightly to herself without even realizing it. Once she did realize it, after the elevator started its descent to the floor that the childcare room was located on, she didn't try to stop or hide it, because why should she? Yeah, she was still adjusting, and so was David, and she still missed the crap out of her home and hoped the scumbags that blew it up got Steve's shield to their faces soon, but the changes brought by the disaster had all been almost entirely good. She had a job now and wouldn't be scraping by on student loans and savings that were nearly gone. David had proven himself resilient and had surprised her by how well he'd taken to daycare - if he kept it up, maybe she could even get him into kindergarten soon.

And then, of course, there was the main reason why she walked with a bit more of a bounce in her step now than she ever had before. But he could wait until after she peeked in on her kid.

Once she got to the childcare room, the smiling middle-aged lady at the little pick-up window immediately informed her that all the kids in David's section were asleep for a nap.

She blinked. "A nap?"

"Yes ma'am," the woman smiled.

"He... doesn't take naps."

"Well," the woman shrugged, "sometimes when kids see other kids sleeping, it does the trick. They all fell asleep watching Finding Nemo."

Her eyebrows went even higher. He didn't even like that movie! "Wow. Okay, um... well, thank you," she said, frowning a little as she walked off towards the elevator once more, unsure of what to do with her hour break now that she had it to herself. She'd already eaten during her last errand - New York City street food was awesome, at least so far - so she couldn't kill an hour that way.

Only one thing left to do, then. Once the elevator doors closed in front of her, leaving her thankfully alone in the small space, she looked up at the ceiling and said quietly, "... JARVIS?"

"Yes, Ms. McAdams?"

"Would you happen to know where Bucky is?"

"He is currently deflecting punches on the thirty-second floor."

Her eyes widened a little. "Oh... uh..."

"There is a gym located on that floor, Miss. The punches appear to be friendly."

Oh. She smiled and shook her head at herself. "Right. Okay, thanks, Mister Robot Voice."

"I do prefer JARVIS, ma'am."

"You're an artificial intelligence - how can you prefer anything?" she asked, eyebrow raised.

"I would answer that question, but it would serve to inflate my designer's ego more than is currently necessary."

She grinned. "You're a sassy robot."

"I prefer 'sharp-witted intelligence'."

She chuckled, then looked down at herself as the elevator approached the thirty-second floor. She was wearing her black pencil skirt that had turned out to be a great investment, and a short-sleeved, somewhat dark blue blouse. Hoping that JARVIS wasn't watching and judging her, she undid the top button of the shirt and then checked her hair with her fingertips, finding it still safely done up at the back of her head with the face-framing pieces in the front still in place. She felt a little like a teenager dressing up as some professional corporate chick trying to climb the ladder, but her updo was just messy enough to be youthful and she was pleasantly surprised that she could actually pull off the professional look at all.

Once the doors opened, her heels clicked softly against the spotless floor just before the elevator as she looked around. The floor seemed split into two hallways, and she looked down each one before shrugging and heading down the one to her left, for no particular reason. She started to think that she'd chosen right when she heard slight clanking sounds coming from ahead, and when she finally reached the end of the long hall, she turned a corner and was then staring right into an enormous open space looking every bit like the extravagant gym one would find in a billionaire's skyscraper, if that was a thing. Apparently it was a thing.

And the gym happened to be crawling with Avengers and their pals. The first to notice her was Natasha, who was closest to the entrance and wrapping up her hands as she looked up and grinned. "Come to see the show?"

"What show?" Summer asked, glancing past Natasha and catching a glimpse of a metal gleam on the other side of the room. There was Bucky, who appeared to be stretching or something, and she recognized the golden head of Thor a few yards away from him - Thor, who was casually tossing his hammer up in the air and catching it, and who was dressed in a black tank that almost made her teeth chatter.

Suddenly snapping out of it, she looked back to Natasha and thought that she'd just missed her reply. "What?"

"I haven't answered yet. I was waiting for you to stop drooling first," she answered with a wry grin.

"Thor's wearing a tank top," Summer replied, as if that was all the explanation needed.

Natasha glanced over her shoulder and inclined her head slightly. "Yeah... it's somewhat distracting."

Finally, they agreed on something. Summer smiled and then asked, "So, what show?"

Natasha gestured to Bucky and explained, "He thinks he can hold his own against a god. Steve says yes, Sam and I say no."

Summer almost immediately sided with Steve's opinion, but... Thor did have a magic hammer. She paused, mentally weighing the hammer against Bucky's arm before deciding she had no idea what she was even thinking about and shrugging, "Well, this is gonna kill me."

"Why, because of all of the frustrated hormones?"

Summer glanced up and muttered, "Honestly, yes."

With another grin, Natasha said, "Good, come get a front row seat, then."

Bucky didn't notice her arrival as she walked closer, walking past rows and rows of exercise equipment before glancing to her right and doing a double take as her jaw nearly hit the floor. If she'd had time to think about it, she would have known that Steve wouldn't really find a whole lot of use in an average human being's gym, but since she hadn't thought of that, she stood in slight shock and stared up at him as he used a treadmill like a normal man would use a barbell.

"Hi," he smiled with a mild grimace, though not really breaking a sweat as he lifted the thing up and down.

"... Hi," she muttered back, smiling and shaking her head a little bit. Not far off was Sam, making do with the kind of weights that the rest of Earth had to settle for, muttering about showoffs and actively breaking a sweat. Then she glanced at Natasha, whose thoughts were for once almost completely readable on her face as she watched Steve's antics with a distinctly, and darkly, delighted expression. Then Summer looked away, reflexively wondering what in the world their nights together even involved, considering their various... er... strengths. Then she shook her head and refocused her attention on her own super soldier, who was still oblivious to her presence.

"I'd make a comment about super-soldier stamina," Natasha remarked, having moved on, "but you wouldn't understand yet."

"... When did this become common knowledge, by the way?" Summer asked, perching on a bench, glancing at Bucky and confirming that he still hadn't seen her.

Natasha smiled at her a bit similarly one would smile at a child who had asked a very silly question and replied, "Its not. In layman's terms, I am a very good judge of people."

"... Including whether people are getting any or not?" she asked, a little wide-eyed.

Natasha shrugged. "It's easier than you think, if you know what to look for." She glanced at Bucky and said, "His shoulders and eyebrows are the giveaways."

"His... what?"

"Tension. Steve used to look almost exactly the same," Natasha replied with a small grin before looking at Summer. "And as for you, it's the constant blushing."

"I don't think it's a constant thing, necessarily..."

Natasha gave her a look. She rolled her eyes in defeat.

"Well, fine, whatever. But that probably won't change after -"

The sound of of a somehow distinctly metal punch caught her off mid-sentence, and suddenly all eyes were on Bucky and the Asgardian royalty who had gamely let him throw the first punch. Thor blocked it with minimal effort, and apparently in the interest of fairness, his hammer sat innocently in the corner.

Looking at the two men, Summer got the distinct impression that neither one of them took the other particularly seriously. Bucky still thought it was weird that Asgard was actually a place and aliens a real thing, and Summer suspected that he thought Thor was a bit of a joke. Thor, on the other hand, surely held a high standard by which he could be impressed by a mortal's abilities, and he hadn't crossed paths with Bucky during his terrifying assassin days, so he didn't seem all that concerned either.

Which was why he was a little surprised when his own blow was deflected with ease a few seconds later. Summer bit her lip, unsure of exactly how far this was supposed to go - were they supposed to try to actually hurt each other? - and then she flinched in surprise when Thor threw a kick that Bucky sidestepped before surprising everybody watching by landing a backhanded strike to Thor's jaw with his right hand.

Even Thor looked surprised for a moment. Then he lunged forward, and Summer wasn't sure exactly what Bucky did, but it looked like some fancy gymnastics-y flip that resulted in him swinging behind Thor and landing his knee harshly to the middle of his back. It didn't look like it hurt Thor much, but it annoyed him, and from there, Summer watched with a slackened jaw as the two men progressively became more irritated with the other and showed it by hitting harder. And yet they seemed to be enjoying themselves at the same time.

"Well, well, who was right... again?" Summer heard Steve gloat from behind her, but Natasha waved him off.

"Wait more than two minutes before you claim victory, Rogers."

"I didn't say he'd beat Thor - I said he'd hold his own," Steve pointed out.

Summer tuned it all out, somewhat dazed by the sheer skill and almost viciousness of what she was watching. Thor literally tossed Bucky into the wall, leaving a human-shaped dent there, and he just got up from the floor as if it had been nothing and tried to tackle Thor in response.

And the fact that they were arguably the two most attractive men she'd ever seen might have contributed to her stupor, just a tad.

"Holy... crap..."

She only realized that she said it out loud when she heard Natasha chuckle next to her. "How's those hormones?"

She laughed, then flinched and hissed outside of her control when Bucky took a full Asgardian fist to his face. After his head whipped to the side and he staggered back, he opened his eyes and finally noticed Summer standing there watching. For one very brief second, she stared back and was caught between genuine concern for him and appreciation for how good he looked with his hair a mess and harmless rage in his eyes. Then a blur of silver caught her eye, and before she could realize that Mjolnir was flying directly at the man she was staring at, his metal arm shot up to cover his face, and the legendary hammer bounced off of the arm and went barreling into the wall instead. Tony Stark was gonna be pissed about his gym being partially demolished.

Bucky stared at the wall for a moment, as did Thor, and everyone seemed collectively surprised that the hammer had actually bounced off of his arm. But then the brief interlude was over, and it was back to ridiculously quick and intense hand to hand combat, though the hammer did make a reappearance from time to time.

Realizing the hilarious undertones of watching a millennia-old mythical figure wage mock battle with her almost century-old boyfriend, Summer continued to watch in rapt attention and eventually let her inner monologue find its way out again.

"Thor's like... Wreck-It Ralph and Fix-It Felix all in one..."

Cursing silently when she realized she'd said that out loud as well, she glanced at Natasha to find her eyeing her with slight confusion. Steve was equally clueless, but to her right, the still-seated Sam chuckled and replied, "Good one."

Well, at least one of them was a Disney fan.

She flinched again when it was Thor's turn to get pummeled into the wall, further damaging the room, and suddenly Summer was reminded of all of the footage from the invasion of New York that she'd seen over the last few years. Thor perched on top of a building, lighting the whole thing up with lightning, Thor on the very building she was currently standing in, battling his brother who vaguely resembled some weird kind of bug with his helmet on...

She glanced slightly nervously at Natasha, then asked quietly, "You, uh... you probably... met... and fought... Loki, right?"

"That's one way of putting it. Why?"

Summer opened her mouth, but then closed it, deciding that she didn't need the potential judgment that came with asking the question she'd nearly asked. She focused once more on Bucky, who nearly gave her a heart attack by actually head-butting Thor before throwing more punches, all while his metal arm whizzed and clicked and shifted plates to accommodate the force of the blows. But then Natasha broke her concentration and asked one more time, "Why?"

She stifled a groan and decided she really didn't care about the judgment thing. "Well, I know he was horrible and evil and psycho and all that, but... in the footage he looked really... ah... you, know, from a purely physical perspective -"

"What's your question?" Natasha asked, tone bored.

"Was it just the camera angle or something or was he really that attractive?"

Natasha's poker face gave away nothing for the few seconds that it took her to give an answer. "No."

That was not the answer she'd anticipated. "Really?"

"To be honest," Natasha explained, "the footage didn't do him justice."

"Oh." Well then.

Behind them, Steve groaned. "Ugh, Nat..."

"She said purely physical perspective," Natasha shrugged. "And purely physically, he was -"

"I really don't want to hear the rest of that sentence," Steve interrupted, prompting Natasha to grin.

"Hey, you want me to be honest, right?"

"Maybe not all the time," Steve admitted.

Summer stopped listening to them when a voice from the doorway made everyone stop and look there, including Bucky and Thor.

"And here I thought JARVIS was joking when he said you guys were destroying my gym. Least you could have done was invite me to the party."

Tony Stark's appearance suddenly reminded Summer that she was on a work break, and after fishing her phone from her pocket and checking how much longer she had, she glanced up to find Thor - sporting a nice little cut near his eyebrow and significantly messier but still glorious hair - smiling brightly at Tony and saying, "My apologies, Tony! The damage is my fault for underestimating my opponent."

He clapped Bucky on the shoulder then, and where a lesser man would have likely fallen over from the unintended force of it, Bucky didn't budge. He glanced up at Thor and nodded. "Yeah. Good fight."

"Indeed," Thor agreed. "I was wrong to assume that arm was the majority of your strength. You are quite skilled."

Bucky nodded, only seeming slightly awkward as he appeared to think for a minute before answering, "And you're... okay, I guess."

Thor laughed at that, clapping him again before he started heading away from the open area and towards Summer, whom his gaze instantly fixed upon. She looked him over as he came closer, noting a bruise on his cheekbone that was already looking rather ugly and what looked like a cut on the top of his forehead - probably from when he decided it was a good idea to headbutt the "god of thunder" - and as soon as he was close she reached out a hand to his cheek and said, "You should really put some ice on that."

He shrugged off her concern, taking her hand from his face and loosely holding it as he glanced at Steve and shared what Summer could only describe as a "bro-nod" before he turned back to her and asked, "Break?"

"Yep. Just in time to watch you and Thor beat each other up," she grinned.

He started to lead her away from the group, their hands still lightly entwined as he gave her a look and asked, "Enjoy watching?"

"Honestly, I could watch you beat up other beautiful men all day," she shrugged. "Is that weird?"

"Probably."

As they headed out of the gym, Tony called after them, "I'm sending you a bill, Buck-o!"

Summer laughed and Bucky rolled her eyes, walking them out into the hallway and towards the elevator. "Where we going?" she asked conversationally, noticing how the sounds of her heels hitting the floor with each step had drawn his eyes to her legs. "Back to our floor?"

He nodded. "When are you off?"

"Five," she replied. They stopped in front of the elevator, and she took the opportunity to scrutinize his bruised cheek again. "I'm going up with you and making you put ice on that."

"It'll heal in a day or two either way -"

"I don't care," she protested. "You can't argue with a mother about things like this."

He grinned a little, just as the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. A few more minutes of lighthearted bickering followed until they reached the thirty-sixth floor, which was where she physically dragged him to a stool near the bar and made him sit as she went to the freezer. She grabbed the first thing she could find, which was a bag of mixed vegetables, and then marched back to where he sat. He eyed the bag like it was offensive as she held it out for him to take, so she sighed and pressed it to his cheekbone for him. He hissed a little at the coldness, but he got over it quickly, sighing in resignation as she watched his eyes scan over her.

His gaze stopped at her chest, and she didn't expect his fingers that rose up to brush against the opening of her blouse as he noted, "This was buttoned higher earlier."

The way she saw it, she could either be embarrassed at being caught, or she could own it and try to copy the sort of grins that Natasha was a master of. She settled for somewhere in the middle as his eyes flickered up to hers, smiling as she said, "Yeah... you caught me."

He nudged the fabric further apart, then let his fingers play with the next button as he looked up again and asked, "For me?"

She made a slight scoffing sound. "No, for all the cab drivers. Of course it's for you." When he pried open the next button, revealing a bit of the black lace of her bra, her grip on the frozen bag faltered a little and she looked around the room as she hissed, "Hey now - anyone could walk in here -"

He ignored her, leaning forward and away from the bag as he pressed a kiss to the very top of her chest, just above her cleavage, and she dropped the bag on the counter in defeat as she half-heartedly tried pushing him away with her hand that had shot into his hair. "I've got seriously twelve minutes until I have to get back to work!"

"You can do a lot with twelve minutes," he murmured against her skin, holding her by her hips and peppering little kisses along the tops of her breasts as she failed to stop him.

She groaned at his comment, silently cursing and also praising his recent slight spike in confidence. She was sure that it was thanks to his recently recovered memories, which surely involved some most likely amazing physical ones. He was making more comments like these and, rather than looking at her as if he was contemplating what he wanted to do to her, he had been looking at her like he knew exactly what he wanted to do to her.

And that was exactly what he did a moment later, peeking up at her and grinning faintly at her flustered smile as she muttered, "You're killing me here."

"Only fair," he shrugged, gesturing to her blouse.

"Hey, all I did was pop open a button. I didn't start kissing on you and giving you sex eyes ten minutes before you had to be somewhere."

"You can if you want. I won't stop you," he replied, bringing her closer once more and resuming the maddening kisses along the parts of her chest that were exposed.

"I don't... ugh," she muttered, closing her eyes at the little sparks caused by his persisting touch, "I don't know how to give sex eyes."

He chuckled and stopped to look up at her again. "Yeah you do. You were doing it down in the gym."

"... I was?" she asked skeptically.

"You do it all the time."

She did? Suddenly she was very concerned what this supposed look of hers actually looked like. Hopefully it wasn't just wide-eyed staring and drool dripping from the corner of her mouth. Oh man. This could be bad. "Uh..."

Then he stood up, and his lips were on hers before she had a chance to start overthinking. He backed her up against the kitchen counter and she succumbed helplessly to the way that he kissed her, barely noticing what his hands were doing with the front of her shirt until he broke away from her lips. Breathing a bit heavier than she had been before, she looked up at him and then glanced down, finding her blouse fixed and buttoned fully.

"The cab drivers might be disappointed," she joked.

"Good," he muttered before kissing her once more, just before he turned and began heading for his room.

She checked the time once more, biting her lip in frustration when she saw that she was all but out of time. She would have called after him that she'd make him pay later for making her drag herself back to work as a big ball of frustration, but the thing was, she couldn't make him pay yet in the way that she really wanted to.

But one day, hopefully sooner than she thought, she would. She mentally vowed this as Bucky shot her one more look before closing his door, the lingering hint of a crooked grin on his lips her hint that he was thinking along the same lines as she was.

She turned around and headed back to the elevator with a heavy sigh. "One fricking day."

* * *

><p>"It's just... really... strange."<p>

On the penthouse level of Stark Tower, sitting outside on the very same area that had once been one of the frontlines of the Battle of New York, sat two very old and yet still very young men, speaking of an experience that very few others in the world, if any, could relate to.

Steve nodded his agreement, looking out towards the city and the buildings that hadn't existed back when he first lived there. "Yeah, strange is one way of putting it."

Staring down at his feet dangling off into the steep drop beneath them, Bucky shook his head slightly and said, "It feels like it was yesterday, but at the same time. It doesn't. I can't... I don't know."

"Wrap your head around it?" Steve guessed. "Yeah. It'll take awhile. I'm not really sure it'll ever feel... right, exactly." Then he glanced over at Bucky and added, "I'm sorry. She lived a great life."

It was nearly impossible to convey in words how bizarre it was to suddenly remember, almost out of the blue, a woman that he'd loved enough to want to marry before the fall, and then almost immediately discover that she had died only a few years earlier at the age of 89. It was so disjointed and startling, and a week later, Bucky was still trying to process it all.

The nice thing was, however, he didn't have to convey it in words, because Steve understood.

"She made it big," Bucky eventually said.

"Oh yeah," Steve nodded. "I've seen some of her stuff. She got to do everything she wanted."

"I knew she would." Bucky then furrowed his brows a bit and added, "I think."

"You did. Always encouraged her to go after her dreams."

The nurse he'd loved had gone on to become an accomplished actress and singer, after the war was over. She wasn't some easily forgotten actress who'd only had one or two recognizable roles - she had left an impressive and distinguished mark on the world that she'd loved. "And she got married. Two kids, too."

Steve nodded. "She seemed real happy."

And Bucky was glad that she had been. He was happy that she'd gotten everything she'd wanted and more, that she hadn't given up and had worked hard to get the success that she'd achieved. It was just hard to accept when a part of him felt as if he should be able to tell her that himself, that he should be able to walk around the corner and show up to her apartment and take her out dancing to celebrate it all. Now, the closest he could get was her grave, and he didn't want to go there.

And it was all doubly difficult when he hadn't remembered a thing about her until just a week earlier.

"I looked her up when I... woke up," Steve said. "She started a foundation for vets and never stopped helping people after she left nursing. She gave an interview where she talked about you, how you inspired her and she wanted to honor your memory."

Bucky looked at Steve a little warily, a little wide-eyed just by a fraction, torn between the need to see this interview for himself and the fear of what it would do to him to see it.

"I'll send you the link," Steve said quietly. "You can watch it whenever you decide you're ready."

Bucky nodded, looking back to the skyline and letting his thoughts swirl around in his head before Steve's voice interrupted them.

"Now that you remember her, it's not gonna... cause problems, is it? It's just that it took me a long time to move on. I know what you're feeling."

Bucky sighed, taking a minute before answering his friend. "That's the thing. Now that I remember her, it's helped me... understand some things. With Summer."

"Yeah?"

He nodded, still staring ahead. "Yeah. It was hard to know when I couldn't remember, but..."

"You love her," Steve surmised. Bucky turned and looked at him curiously, and Steve just smiled a little and said, "Look, I was around the whole time you were hung up on Vivian. I remember the way you looked when you with her. And with Summer, it's like that, only... more."

And that was only further confirmation to what Bucky had already figured out. Then he felt a hand pat his upper arm, and he looked over to see Steve grinning. "I'm happy for you. Honestly, she's as close to perfect for you as it gets. You would have liked her back then just as much as you do now."

He thought on that for a moment, before asking quietly, "Do you think... for her... you think it's the same?"

"Bucky," Steve began, "look at what's happened to her this year. Look at all she's been through and how devoted to you she's been through it all. And look at the way she lights up when she sees you. She's an open book."

Looking back down, Bucky replied, "That's what I think most of the time, but sometimes I just wonder... why. Why she hasn't run yet."

"The answer to that isn't as complicated as you think."

Maybe not. Maybe Steve was right. Maybe Bucky wasn't the only one with feelings that ran as deeply as his did. But Summer, as much of an open book as she was, didn't have the kind of experience that Bucky had just remembered that he had. He had the feeling that they'd both been a bit clueless all along, and now that he was less clueless, it was a shift that would definitely take some getting used to.

After a few moments of silence, Bucky asked, "Can you send me that link?"

"Yep," Steve nodded, dragging his phone out of his pocket.

Afterwards, after Bucky's phone buzzed with the incoming text and he let it be for the moment, knowing he'd rather be alone to watch the interview, Steve took a moment or two before saying, "Don't take this the wrong way, because I wouldn't wish any of this on anyone, especially not you. I know how it hurts and how hard it is to accept. But until now, I don't think anyone else in the world could really understand what it was like to... wake up one day and still be young but find out the person you loved is... either gone or can't remember you."

"It sucks," Bucky muttered, some of the current century's vernacular starting to come natural to him.

"Yeah. But, on the bright side, we've both come out pretty lucky with dames, right?" Steve grinned, pulling him right back to the time that they were both supposed to still be living in.

"No offense," Bucky replied, "but I don't know if I'd call you lucky."

Steve chuckled. "Well, you know me. Can't ever go for the safe option."

That made Bucky almost snort. "Do those even exist anymore?"

"I don't know," Steve sighed. "Probably not. At least not for us."

And that was true on a number of levels. But it was what it was. And anyway, safety was overrated.

After awhile, as the sun started disappearing behind the buildings in the distance, Bucky gathered his legs up off the ledge and said, "By the way, your room isn't soundproof. Keep it down or I'm gonna have to switch rooms again."

"... Oh. Uh... sorry," Steve replied, instantly flustered.

"And there's a kid around now, too, and he's not deaf."

"Right. No, you're right."

Trying not to laugh at Steve's ever-more flushed face, Bucky added as he stood up, "Also, you might not understand her when she starts speaking Russian, but I do, and I'm trying very hard to forget what I heard."

Suddenly Steve's eyes widened and he turned around and asked, "What did she say? She never tells me no matter what I -"

"Don't ask me, because I am never repeating it," Bucky vowed with complete and utter seriousness, grimacing at the memory as he left Steve sitting there on the edge of the building, mildly embarrassed and considering learning Russian himself.

* * *

><p>Of the things that Bucky was happy to get used to following Summer's moving in a hallway away from him, it was the casual, everyday sort of affectionate touches that they hadn't had before. Whether it was due to mutual awkwardness in the beginning or her initial desire to keep their relationship hidden from her son, they hadn't done much in the way of lounging together on a couch with Summer half-laying on him until now, at least not without caring who would see. Now, however, it was becoming part of his usual expectations for his evenings in the tower, and it was wonderfully soothing to his nerves.<p>

That night, after dinner was over and the floor's other residents had all either wandered off to their own rooms or gone off to do who knows what else, he found himself on one of the couches, nestled comfortably into the corner of it while Summer sat curled into his left side with her bare feet propped up on the coffee table in front of the couch. He didn't know why she always seemed to choose that side to snuggle into, since it couldn't be all that comfortable in the practical sense, but she seemed to always end up there one way or another.

She was playing on her phone, and he was half-watching her son play a video game in front of the TV. Sam had something called a "Playstation 4", whatever that was, and David had taken to it like a fish to water. In fact, he was pretty sure that the kid hadn't moved an inch in the last hour.

A familiar sounding tune coming from Summer's phone stole his attention from the television, and he glanced over her shoulder to find her watching her watching on her sideways-facing phone a black and white video of what he quickly recognized as swing dancing. The song itself brought forth his recently-recovered memories back to the surface, and with a faint smile tugging at his lips, he asked quietly, "Why are you watching that?"

"No reason," came her reply, but he could hear the smile in her tone.

"Really?"

After a moment, she hit the pause button and then turned around to face him, indeed smiling as she said, "Okay - so I was thinking. And you need a hobby, right?"

"... Right," he said a little cautiously.

"And you remember how to dance now. At least a little. Right?"

Probably more than a little, even if he would be the very definition of rusty. "Right."

"Okay, so," she smiled, "I was thinking that we could try dancing. Not going out anywhere to do it - just doing it here, with you teaching me how. Which might be almost impossible, considering how bad I suck, but I've also never really tried before, so who knows?"

"... You really want to?" he asked in somewhat of surprise, though the ghost of a smile was still on his face.

"Yeah, why not?" she asked cheerfully. "It'll be fun. But only if you want to, of course."

He looked around the room then, several questions passing through his head before he settled on, "Where?"

She shrugged and then looked around. "Well, I guess we'd kinda need an open space, but... I could just move the furniture around in here."

Before he could formulate a response, she had jumped out of his arms and was on her feet, doing a quick sweep of the room before deciding to start with the coffee table. He watched with slight amusement and surprise as she started dragging it back, and she looked up and grinned halfway through, "If you want to help me here, Mister Super-Soldier, feel free."

He grinned back and then stood up, and in a few minutes, all of the furniture in the living room had been pushed aside to make a large, empty area in the center, all while David kept playing as if nothing was happening behind him. Summer giggled at the ease with which Bucky moved it all, and then once it was done, she gestured to Steve's record player and asked, "Does he have some records that'll work?"

"I think so," Bucky replied, walking over to the shelf that the record player sat on. Steve had left it there with his records in the section next to it, and as Bucky thumbed through them carefully, a few of the titles rang familiar. But before he plucked one from the shelf, he turned around and looked at Summer with a little bit of uncertainly and said, "It's probably gonna take awhile for me to... really remember what I'm doing."

"Oh, I know!" she said brightly. "And I have no clue how to even start learning to dance, so I think it'll be extra fun. But I also have a feeling that you're gonna be better than you think."

"Why?" he asked, genuinely curious.

She shrugged a little. "I don't really know. Just a feeling. You wanna watch a video first? Like a refresher?"

He considered that idea for a moment, but then decided to test his memory first and see how much would come back naturally with just the music. He could remember the steps now, remember dancing like it had been yesterday and yet from a different life at the same time. Maybe it would balance out in the end and his feet would remember the same way that his head did.

"Nah. Let's just try it out and see what happens."

She smiled at his decision, and then he turned back around to pick out a record. There was one that he definitely remembered dancing to in the old clubs he used to take girls to, so he picked that one and put it on while Summer turned down David's game to a more reasonable volume.

As the billowing, rhythmic brass and effortless jazz piano of the first song filled his ears, he stared at the record player for a moment, the intricate notes taking him back to times that were becoming increasingly clear the more that he successfully recalled them. He turned around and looked at the woman waiting a few feet away from him. For half a second, he almost expected to see vibrant red hair and a long green dress that he could suddenly remember in almost perfect detail. But then the image faded and instead, he saw dark hair, blue jeans, and a nervous grin.

The same twinge of sadness that he'd been feeling a lot lately struck once again, but it faded in the light of the present and what he was lucky enough to have within it. Keeping his eyes on hers, he stepped forward and closed the gap between them, reaching out and taking both of her hands in his before pulling her closer and taking a deep breath.

"Should I change into a dress?" she asked unexpectedly. "Even I know nobody swing dances in jeans."

"Or barefoot," he shrugged. "Doesn't matter for now."

She nodded, and then grinned and looked down at her feet as he shifted them a bit, trying to get a feel for the music and let his memories do the rest. He learned rather quickly that the less he thought and the more he just let it come naturally, the better the result.

They started off slow. Summer watched the steps he took intently, the grin never leaving her lips, while he slowly gained confidence the more that he moved and found that it did indeed come naturally. He smiled as he taught her a few of the basic steps, and though he could tell how silly she felt trying to copy him, she made a genuine effort, and after a few tries, they were able to speed it up a little.

The first time he spun her out and then drew her back in, he watched the smile bloom across her face with great satisfaction just before doing it again. He could feel a great difference between this and the time they'd danced on their first date - it had been pleasant and fun, but it had felt mostly foreign. There was nothing foreign about this, however, and it made it all the more enjoyable.

"Hey," she said after he'd twirled her around a couple of times, "you're not gonna start flipping me around without warning me, are you? Because I'd probably end up hurting us both somehow."

He chuckled and shook his head. "I'll go easy on you this time."

Her eyes flashed a little and she looked to be on the verge of a response when he instead made her giggle by spinning her out again and pulling her back in such a way that made her come to a stop with her back to his chest. Her eyes widened a bit in surprise and caught his amused gaze. With a wide grin, he placed a sweet kiss to her neck before turning her again back into the standard closed position.

During the time that they spent dancing and laughing in the living room, David had turned around to glance at them a few times. He would look at them both like they were aliens in the midst of an odd alien ritual before losing interest and turning back to his game, which Summer noticed once and found adorable. Bucky took advantage of her momentary distraction by letting go of her hands and grabbing her by her waist with both hands, picking her up and instantly making her start squealing protests.

"Gah, I'm not ready for the flipping yet! Don't flip me! Don't -"

"I'm not," he laughed, though a part of him wanted to do it anyway just to see her reaction. Instead, he simply picked her up and turned them in a circle before putting her down and taking her hands once more, spinning her to face him. "See?"

"Uh huh," she grinned back with slight distrust. "Sure. Look at how good you're doing. You're totally gonna flip me."

He grinned unashamedly. "Well, if you really want me to..."

"No!" she laughed, looking down at his feet again as she tried to keep up with him. "I've already almost tripped and fallen over just doing the easy stuff!"

"You'll catch on," he shrugged. And he really thought she would. If he could come back from all he'd been through and still be able to do this, then surely she could overcome her anxiety and get the hang of it, too.

He lost track of how long they danced, but it eventually came to an end when the mysterious game on the TV stopped holding David's attention and he threw an empty cup at his oblivious mother to signal that he wanted a snack. She didn't even scold him for it, instead slipping out of Bucky's arms and picking up the cup before running a hand through her hair and turning back to Bucky with a smile while breathing a bit heavily. "This is fun! I like it. I'm terrible, but it's still fun. Can we do this more? Maybe a couple times a week or something?"

He nodded without hesitation. "Yeah. Maybe not in this room, but..."

"Oh yeah, I'll figure out somewhere else we can go," she nodded, glancing down at David, who was now impatiently tugging at her shirt. She nodded at him and then looked back up again with a smile. "I think I'm gonna be kinda sore in the morning, actually."

About ten different retorts flew through his head, none of them exactly appropriate to say in front of her kid, but before he could even open his mouth, she had dashed off to the kitchen. He ended up snorting quietly at himself before running a hand through his own hair and glancing back towards the record player.

While Summer rummaged around in the kitchen, he let the record keep playing, eventually ending up near a huge window and looking out at the lit up city as the music played and tickled at his memories. It seemed fitting, listening to the music he remembered and staring out a city he did and did not remember at the same time. The past and present was overlapped and connected in a way that made no sense and could probably drive a mind insane if it focused too much on it, but somehow, in that moment, he felt calm. Calmer than he probably should, but he wasn't one to question such a feeling when it came over him.

He had been staring out the window for some minutes when he saw Summer's reflection slowly appear in the glass, followed by the gentle touch of her lips to his jaw as her hand came to rest on his shoulder. He turned slightly, turning towards her as she said quietly, "I'm gonna go get David ready for bed. See you after?"

He nodded, closing his eyes briefly when she kissed his lips and then returning her slight smile before she left him there once more, this time alone.

The music, the city, the memories, the present - it was all undeniably abnormal, but it was becoming his normal. Remembering the woman he'd loved all those years ago hadn't merely brought a sadness and a sense of grief, but it had given him another piece of himself that had unlocked more memories in the last week. They came in dreams or in conversations or from nothing at all, and though he feared that they'd stop and leave him at another brick wall that it would take months to scale, this was the first time that he had real hope that he may eventually get all of his memories back in time. Just like Steve had always told him.

And also like Steve had mentioned a few times, he finally understood why making new memories was possibly even better than getting back old ones. And that, he knew, was all thanks to the woman who would be knocking on his bedroom door in another hour or so.

He smiled to himself, and while he still didn't smile as easily or broadly as he once had, it no longer felt like the strange thing that it had been upon waking up to his new life.

* * *

><p>On some level, Summer was aware that if a couple was attempting to control their physical urges and hold off on certain things until a yet-to-be determined time, it was probably not the greatest idea to end up in a bed together almost every night. But, as it was, that seemed to happen one way or another each night, and this one was no different.<p>

With David happily snoozing in bed back in her own room, she found herself in Bucky's room, in his bed, under his sheets and giggling as she nearly fell off the bed after unwittingly revealing to him one of her most despised weaknesses: her severe ticklishness.

"Stop! Oh, God, stop!" she choked out through embarrassingly high-pitched laughs, ending up as a ball of sheets and giggles as she indeed took a tumble off the bed in a desperate effort to get away from her almost gleeful attacker. Once she hit the floor, she looked up with a goofy smile still plastered on her face and saw him following her, leaning over the edge of the bed with a grin on his face, and before she could get up and run away, his metal arm shot out and wrapped itself under her shoulders and pulled her back up to the bed like it was the easiest thing in the world.

He dropped her on his lap, and his arm thwarted her escape by locking around her waist and holding her close as she placed her hands on his shoulders and immediately started trying to squirm away. He laughed and quickly assured her, "I'm done, I'm done."

She paused but looked at him skeptically. "I don't trust you."

His smile flickered only momentarily before he said a bit more seriously, "No, I mean it. I'm done."

She studied him a moment before deciding to accept that, nodding and saying, "Okay, because I kind of hate being tickled. Just because I'm laughing doesn't mean I like it."

"Fair enough," he replied, right hand busying itself with straightening out her hair that had gotten a bit tangled during the assault. "So tell me what you do like."

While her cheeks returned to their nearly default state of being uncomfortably flushed, she smiled and looked down because after all of this time, his eye contact was still too much sometimes, somehow especially when it was playful. "You probably know the answers to that by now."

"Not as many as I'd like to," he murmured, gathering her hair into his hand and away from her neck so he could kiss her there.

"Well... there's one," she sighed, lacing her fingers through his hair and letting her eyes flutter shut for a moment as shivers shot down her spine at the touch. Then he hummed lowly against her skin and suddenly she was on her back, underneath him, laughing a little at the sudden change just before he grinned back and then kissed her soundly.

It always seemed to come back to this, she thought with the small part of her brain that still managed to function when he kissed her like that. Some nights were more frustrating than others, but each passing one would bring her one mental step closer to being ready for more. She wasn't sure how much longer she could hold out, and she thought Bucky deserved a medal for his own self-control. A medal and... other things.

He seemed to always stop himself just as he was on the cusp of getting carried away, and this time was no different. He broke away from their long kiss to lean his forehead near her temple, breathing deep to steady himself, and she pulled away by just an inch or two to look at him as her fingers continued their trek through his hair. He looked up at her when she did, and with a small smile on her face, she said quietly, "You seem... different."

"Different?" he asked, slight concern coloring his lazily desirous expression.

"Good different," she quickly clarified. "Like you're more... I don't know... here. More... you. Even though I didn't know you then, it just seems more like what I imagined, I guess." Then she paused and added a little cautiously, "Maybe a little happier."

"Happy" had never been an adjective she'd use to describe him before, and it still wasn't, exactly. But "happier" seemed to fit the bill quite well. She watched his brows furrow slightly at her word choice, as if he thought the word was as odd as she did, but then his features softened and he suddenly looked very contemplative, and similar to the way that he did whenever he was trying to gather his words to express something that wasn't particularly easy.

Whatever was going through his head, she didn't need to hear the words to know how enormous of a thing it was for him to have gotten a significant chunk of his memories back. She loved to see him like this, just a bit more self-possessed and confident, and it brought a happiness to her own mind to watch him make such progress. He'd come a long way from where he'd been when she had first found him, and for that matter, so had she.

She kissed him before she could find out what he'd been trying so hard to express, and she could tell how instantly relieved he was. He shifted to his side and she followed him there, hand on the stubble of his cheek as she pressed closer to him and then smiled into the kiss when his hand wandered to her leg and pulled it over his hip to give him the leverage to pull her on top of him as he rolled to his back.

From there, it was a familiar dance and struggle that she didn't think she'd ever get fully used to. Rather than being accustomed to it, she only grew more and more stunned and exquisitely frustrated by the way that he touched her, kissed her, and let his hands tease and explore both over and under her clothes that a growing part of her wished he'd just rip to shreds. As much as she wished for that, however, she couldn't be more grateful for the fact that she knew he wouldn't until the day came when they'd both decide that they were ready. His respect for her might have been one of the single most alluring things about him.

Between the heat of his kiss and the dizzying contrast of the warm flesh and cold metal of his hands currently running up her back underneath her shirt, she was almost too far gone already to register the numbers on the digital clock directly in front of her line of sight to the left when her eyes opened for a moment. But then she did a double take and groaned almost instantly, "Oh my gosh, it's late."

The hour didn't matter much to Bucky, who merely pulled her back down to him and kissed her enough to nearly make her forget what she'd been saying in the first place, but she had an early day the next morning. She waited until he stopped to take a breath and then smiled, "I have to wake up in like six hours."

He growled slightly in annoyance and kissed her again, but his arms around her loosened a bit in defeat. "Sorry," she said quietly, kissing him lightly one more time before pulling back to smile at him. "After tomorrow I've got two days off."

He nodded, and she pretended that she couldn't feel how frustrated she was as she slowly got off of him and moved her legs off of the bed. But as soon as her feet hit the floor, there was an arm around her waist again and lips at her ear as he said quietly, "You could sleep here."

"Yeah," she said a little shakily as he kissed under her ear, "except we'd just do this all night instead of sleeping."

"Not all night," he countered.

"Close enough," she chuckled, forcing herself to slip away from him and get to her feet. Then she glanced back at him sitting there with his ruffled hair and darkened eyes that were glued to her, and she almost gave in until she remembered the fact that she hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in days due to this very reason.

She grabbed her phone from his nightstand and then glanced at him one more time, finding him equal parts adorable and maddeningly sexy with his unhappy expression. She walked the few steps to him and leaned down to kiss him one more time, and he took the opportunity to try to pull her back into the bed, which made her giggle as she resisted.

"I've gotta go," she half whined, trying to pry his arm off of her waist.

"Not if you don't want to," he argued, lips an inch away from hers.

"Yes I do," she pointed out with a smile. "Now goodnight."

He made a noise of protest and then pulled her closer, kissing her while she giggled and half-heartedly tried to pull away. "Goodnight," she repeated, almost sing-song as she successfully pried his hands off and then managed to stand up for a full second before he pulled her back down and made her laugh again.

They went back and forth for another moment or two before Bucky finally conceded defeat, which she showed her appreciation for with one last kiss, more lingering than the others. Then she smiled after she pulled away, her tone slightly goofy as she pecked his cheek and said, "Now, for the last time, goodnight. I love you. I'll see you in the morning."

Still smiling, she stood up, and this time, he let her go without a hint of a protest. She didn't really register the sudden blankness that fell on his face, mistaking it instead for resignation at her leaving, and she gave him one more smile before leaving the room while she still could. All the while, she was completely unaware of the way in which he stared after her with a mixture of shock and slight confusion on his face.

After, she went to her room and went about her usual routine without a second thought, changing clothes, brushing her teeth, and putting her hair back in a ponytail before dragging herself off to bed, grimacing a little when she checked the time again and hoping she would fall asleep almost immediately upon hitting the bed.

Still blissfully oblivious, she turned off the light and crawled under the covers, sighing heavily and turning on her side as she closed her eyes resolutely, willing herself to go to sleep and make the most out of the five and a half hours she had before she had to get up.

It was just as she entered the state between sleep and wakefulness that what she said back in Bucky's room suddenly hit her with all of the force of a bucket of ice to her face.

Her eyes flew open and her jaw dropped as she suddenly sat up as if out of a dream, gasping almost comically noisy as she exclaimed as loudly as one could in a whisper meant to not awaken a child, "Oh my God!"

Fighting the urge to turn into a literal tomato and then die of embarrassment at her own weirdness and not-ideal, accidental proclamations of love that she wasn't even fully aware of, she then collapsed back on to the bed with a noisy, mortified groan. She covered her face with her hands and instantly knew she definitely wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight, because now she suddenly had a whole lot more to think about than she'd had a few minutes ago.

Letting her hands flop limply beside her head on the pillow, she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, wondering how she could keep thinking to herself that she didn't know if she was in love with him or not when the words had felt so natural coming out of her mouth that it had taken her about a full twenty minutes before she realized that she'd even said them.

Now Bucky's expression as she'd left his room made perfect sense.

She cringed and covered her face again. This is not how these things should go, or at least that's what she thought. He had to think that she was a complete and utter freak. Who else would just blurt out something like that like she was mentioning the state of the weather outside?

And now she had to figure out how to act around him the next day. Should she mention it, or just keep it to herself and act like she never said anything? What if she freaked him out and now he would pull away because it was too much too soon? Granted, it didn't feel even slightly too soon, but still...

And that was how she spent the rest of the night, overthinking and hovering on the edge of full-blown panic rather than sleeping, dreading the following day and all of the nightmarish scenarios she expected to result from her unexpected verbal confession of love.

She should have just stayed in his room like he'd suggested, because at least then, she probably would have been too busy doing other things to blurt out the words currently rattling around her brain like a waking nightmare.

She groaned and turned over face-first into her pillow, groaning pathetically and giving up all hope of ever even resembling a normal human being. Meanwhile, in his room, Bucky still sat in the exact same position that she'd left him in, still staring ahead and barely blinking, infinitely confused and for once overthinking nearly enough to rival Summer herself.

**A/N: first and foremost, my deepest thanks to midnightwings96, who has lent her help to this and future dancing scenes and made them so much better than I originally had that it is ridiculous. Dancing is harder for me to write decently than fight scenes, and that's saying something, so extra thanks to her for being amazing :D also, my usual thanks and love to the readers, reviewers, and followers, you're all the best and your feedback continues to make my day. Eventually here soon-ish we're gonna catch up with my stash of chapters, and updates may come a little slower than they have been, but I'll try to keep up with the once-weekly thing once we get there. Anywho, I shall see you all next week, and thanks once again for continuing to be amazing :D**


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